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REPORT 


ON 


Investigation of Pro-British History 
Text-Books in Use in the Public 
Schools of The City of New York 


zAft the ‘Direction of 
HON. JOHN F. HYLAN, Mayor 


DAVID HIRSHFIELD 

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Commissioner of Accounts , City of New York 





MAY 25, 1923 



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JOHN F. HYLAN 
MAYOR 










DAVID HIRSHFIELD 

COMMISSIONER OF ACCOUNTS 






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Office of the Commissioner of Accounts 

MUNICIPAL BUILDING 
CITY OF NEW YORK 


DAVID HIRSHFIELD. 

COMMISSIONER. 



May 25, 1923. 


SUBJECT—INVESTIGATION OF PRO-BRITISH HISTORY 
TEXT-BOOKS IN USE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

OF THIS CITY. 


Hon. John F. Hylan, 

Mayor. 

Dear Sir—On December 6, 1921, I received from your Honor a letter, of 
which the following is a copy: 


“December 6, 1921. 

David Hirshfield, Esq., 

Commissioner of Accounts. 

Dear Sir—I wish you would make a thorough investigation and report 
to me with regard to the new history readers and text-books alleged to 
contain anti-American propaganda, which have been introduced in the 
public schools of this city. 

It would be interesting to learn why the standard works have been 
supplanted, if such be the fact; who are the authors of the new books; 
and what influence is back of the change. 

This administration has done more than several past administrations 
combined to provide adequate accommodations for school children, and 
our total program calls for 95 school buildings and additions. 

Having made ample provision for school facilities, it is our intention 
to see that the buildings are devoted to the purposes for which they were 
erected. There is no room in any of our schools for anti-American propa¬ 
ganda or anything which would besmirch American traditions and the 
glory, renown and good name of our American Republic and its founders. 

America has given to the world great fundamental truths in govern¬ 
ment of the people, for the people, by the people. These truths have been 
woven in the warp and woof of our social, economic and political fabric. 
Many nations, some centuries older than our own, have profited by our 
example. 


8 


We have never forgotten our debt to early patriots who bequeathed to 
us the beneficent institutions of free government. At the risk of their 
lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, our forefathers committed 
themselves to the cause of human liberty. It was an experiment, pure 
and simple—but a successful one. 

It is amazing to think that any publication intended for the use of 
school children, should refer to our early patriots as ‘hot-headed mobs,’ 
‘smugglers’ and ‘pirates.’ The fortitude, supreme common sense and 
sagacity of Washington and the other patriots have always been a never- 
ending source of inspiration, and it will be a sad day if alien propaganda 
is permitted to alter the enviable record of their service and patriotism. 

The school children of this city must not be inoculated with the 
poisonous virus of foreign propaganda which seeks to belittle illustrious 
American patriots. What our school children are taught to believe about 
America and its founders becomes the spirit of America in the future. 
Let these children continue to be taught the truth as they have in the past, 
and we need have no misgivings as to the future welfare of the Republic. 

Very truly yours, 

John F. Hylan, 

Mayor” 

Pursuant to this request, I made a study of the American history text-books 
in use in the public schools of the City of New York, against which complaints 
have been made. 

In addition to having read and examined the history text-books complained 
of and having done extensive research work, I held five public hearings during 
the period from February 3 to April IS, 1922, to which all those interested were 
invited. 

These hearings were well attended and the following-named persons appeared 
and spoke against the use of the un-American text-books in our schools: 

Col. Alvin M. Owsley, 

National Commander, The American Legion. 

Mr. Charles Grant Miller, 

Author of “Treason to American Tradition.” 

Col. H. B. Fairbanks, 

Chairman, Executive Committee, Veterans of Foreign Wars. 

Mr. Joseph T. Griffin, 

Principal, Public School 114, Manhattan. 

Mr. Julius Hyman, 

Representing National Security League and Jewish Welfare Board. 
Mrs. John Jerome Rooney, 

Chairman, District School Board, No. 15, Manhattan. 


9 


Mr. William Pickens, 

Field Secretary, National Association for Advancement of Colored 
People. 

Mr. F. E. DeWees, 

31 East 27th Street, New York. 

Judge Wallace McCamant, 

President General, National Society Sons of the American Revolution. 
Major David Banks, 

Secretary General, Military Order of Foreign Wars. 

Mr. Thos. P. Tuite, 

Executive Secretary, The Star-Spangled Banner Association, and 
Secretary, Vanderbilt Post, Grand Army of the Republic. 

Mr. William M. Van Der Weyde, 

President, Thomas Paine National Memorial Association. 

Mrs. Marie J. Stuart, 

National Association for Advancement of Colored People. 

Mr. John A. Carrigy, 

Commander, Nathan Hale Post, The American Legion, Brooklyn. 

Mr. Warren B. Fisher, 

Representing United American War Veterans. 

Miss Dorothy Burns, 

616 West 116th Street, New York. 

Mrs. Caroline C. Sperry, 

Mountainview, N. J. 

Mr. Philip Leonard Greene, 

International President, Pan-American Student League. 

Capt. Walter I. Joyce, 

National Chairman, Americanization Committee, Veterans of Foreign 
Wars. 

Mr. Charles Edward Russell, 

Author, diplomat and publicist. 

Mr. George E. Morrison, 

Manager Editor, “The Historic Hudson.” 

The following-named persons appeared and spoke in defense of the histories 
complained against: 

Mr. Francis M. Kinnicut. 

Member, Advisory Board, the English Speaking World. 

Mr. Telfair Minton, 

Secretary, The Loyal Coalition. 


10 


While none of the authors of the complained-of text-books appeared at 
these hearings, I am told that several representatives of the text-book publishers 
attended, but none spoke. 

From the examination of the text-books and a study of the whole subject 
and from the testimony given before me, it appears that standard American 
school histories have been largely supplanted in the New York City public schools 
by eight texts recently revised, so far as they relate to the Revolution, the War 
of 1812 and other Anglo-American differences. 

Under the specious pretense of “promoting more friendly relations” and 
“mutual understanding” with Great Britain, our school children are now being 
taught not the consecrated maximum, “Taxation without representation is 
tyranny,” but, quite to the contrary, that “In England’s taxation of the colonies 
there was no injustice or oppression,” and that the real reason independence was 
sought, was because after England had at great cost crushed out autocracy in 
the Western Hemisphere, the colonists no longer needed the protection of the 
mother country, and were unwilling to pay their fair share of the costs incurred. 

Faneuil Hall, “the cradle of liberty,” is of no consequence in these new his¬ 
tories, nor is the Mutiny Act, the Stamp Act, or the Boston Massacre, which the 
colonists deemed important causes for resentment. 

The martyrdom of Nathan Hale, whose only regret on the British scaffold 
was that he had but one life to give to his country, is in all of them ignored. In 
most of them there is no mention of Joseph Warren, Ethan Allen, Anthony 
Wayne, Paul Revere, Molly Pitcher and Betsy Ross. In one there is a page of 
praise for Benedict Arnold. 

Such important battles as Bunker Hill, Bennington, Oriskany and King’s 
Mountain are omitted. 

Such decisive victories as Ticonderoga, Saratoga, New Orleans and the 
capture of the Serapis are belittled. 

The inspiriting slogans, “We have met the enemy and they are ours,” “Don’t 
give up the ship,” and “I’ve not yet begun to fight,” are either omitted or dis¬ 
credited. 

French aid in the Revolution is by all, but one, of these authors attributed 
to shameful motives. 

As a result of these new texts, the children are now being taught in our 
public schools misrepresentations such as the following: 

That the American Revolution was merely a “civil war” between the 
English people on both sides of the sea and their “German” king; 

That Magna Charta is the real source of our liberties, while the 
Declaration of Independence exerted no vital force; 

That such patriots as Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Patrick 
Henry were mere disreputable characters; 

That Thomas Jefferson deserved a halter; 

That Alexander Hamilton denounced the people as “a great beast”; 


11 


That the United States Constitution and most of our free institu¬ 
tions were borrowed from England; 

That the War of 1812 was “a mistake/’ “disgraceful,” and “un¬ 
fortunate” ; 

That the Mexican war was a grab of territory; 

That the North saved the Union only through England’s “heroic 
support”; 

That our war with Spain was won because England prevented Ger¬ 
many and all Europe from taking sides against us; 

That our country’s history has been “hitherto distorted through 
unthinking adherence to national prejudices”; 

That it is now being “set right” through “newer tendencies in histori¬ 
cal writing” and “methods of modern historical scholarship.” 


It would seem as if these authors wanted to convey the impression that our 
history, our government, and everything else American is all wrong, and that 
the sole hope for American progress lies in our renouncing our American tradi¬ 
tions, surrendering our American spirit and becoming again an integral part of the 
British Empire, as Cecil Rhodes directed in the first draft of his will, quoted in 
Basil Williams’ life of Cecil Rhodes: 


“Directed that a Secret Society should be endowed with the following 
objects: ‘The extension of British rule throughout the world, * * * 

the colonization by British subjects of all lands where the means of liveli¬ 
hood are attainable by energy, labor and enterprise, and especially the 
occupation by British settlers of the entire continent of Africa, the Holy 
Land, the valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the 
whole of South America, the islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed 
by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of 
China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America 
as an integral part of the British Empire! ” 



and also making a reality of Andrew Carnegie’s fondest dream set forth in his 
“Triumphant Democracy” in 1893: 

“Time may dispel many pleasing illusions and destroy many noble 
dreams, but it shall never shake my belief that the wound caused by the 
wholly unlooked-for and undesired separation of the mother from her 
child is not to bleed forever. Let men say what they will, therefore, 
I say that as sure as the sun in the heavens once shone upon Britain and 
America united, so surely is it one morning to rise, shine upon and greet 
again the re-united state, the British-American Union ” 


The texts which I have specially examined are: 

An American History, Revised, 1920, 
by David Saville Muzzey; 



12 


History of the American People, 1918, 
by Willis Mason West; 

School History of the United States, Revised, 1920, 
by Albert Bushnell Hart; 

A History of the United States for Schools, Revised, 1919, 
by McLaughlin and Van Tyne; 

Our United States, 1919, 

by William Backus Guitteau; 

Burke’s Speech on Conciliation, 1919, 
by C. H. Ward; 

Short American History by Grades, 1920, 
by Everett Barnes; 

American History for Grammar Grades, 1920, 
by Everett Barnes; 

all on the List of Authorized Texts of the New York City public schools, selected 
by William L. Ettinger, Superintendent of Schools in the City of New York. 

It appears that from among the ten texts complained of, the eight worst 
offenders against America and Americanism were selected for use in the New 
York public schools. 

At the time this investigation was called for by your Honor, an inquiry into 
similar complaints had been going on for some time by a Special Committee of 
twenty-one, consisting of Superintendents, Principals and Teachers, appointed by 
Superintendent Ettinger. This Committee thereafter, in May, 1922, made its 
report in which certain passages in seven of the complained of texts were criti¬ 
cized, but not a word was said against the Muzzey history. 

Of one of the authors the New York Public School Special Committee’s 
report says: 

“No Wedderburn, no crown advocate, could plead the British cause 
in a more bitterly partisan spirit than West has done.” 

As to all the accused authors, excepting Muzzey, the School Committee 
reported: 

“The paragraphs complained of in their books indicate an attitude of 
mind toward the founders of the Republic which, in our judgment, is 
entirely reprehensible.” 

The report of this Committee was accepted by the Board of Superintendents 
May 15, 1922, and the Committee members were thanked by Superintendent 
Ettinger for their “excellent work.” 

However, for some unexplained reason, the List of Text-Books authorized 
to be used in the public schools of New York City, issued in February, 1923, 
continues to include every one of the histories that had been investigated and con¬ 
demned by the Superintendent’s own investigating committee. 

As I understand it, while all books for use as text-books in the public schools 
of this City must be selected from the List of Authorized Texts, promulgated 


13 


by the Superintendent of Schools, the Principals select for use in their respective 
schools such books on the list as they choose; but, owing to refusal of informa¬ 
tion by the Principals and various other school authorities, by order of Superin¬ 
tendent Ettinger, it has been impossible to obtain information to what extent 
these texts are now in use in our schools. 

During the progress of my investigation, and apparently as a result thereof, 
the Guitteau history and the two Everett Barnes histories were revised. In these 
re-revised text-books, though many offensive passages have been corrected or 
removed, the texts still show their author apparent want of true American 
patriotic appreciation. 

Patriotic protest has forced the Muzzey history out of the public schools in 
many States, but in the New York City school system it seems to be especially 
favored. Thirteen hundred and fifty-six copies of the Muzzey history were 
purchased and placed in the public schools of this City in 1922, and already in 
1923 there have been added eleven hundred and fifty more. 

President-General McCamant of the National Society Sons of the American 
Revolution, in a statement, said in part: 

“There is a great abuse in the matter of the adoption of school books. 
The representatives of the publishing houses spend money lavishly in the 
entertainment of teachers and school superintendents and secure favors 
from the latter which ought not to be granted. 

“In my attack on the Muzzey history in my home city, Portland, Ore., 
I was unable to get anywhere in that jurisdiction until we got rid of a 
school superintendent who was too friendly to Ginn & Co., the publishers 
of the book, to be willing even to consider its displacement. 

“Every one of the publishing houses has a force of smooth promot¬ 
ers, selected because of their personality, who go about the country bring¬ 
ing about the introduction of text-books, not on their merits but on the 
popularity and other persuasive qualities of the men who promote them.” 

The young should receive patriotic enlightenment and be taught loyal citi¬ 
zenship. The quality of the history teachings to the school child largely deter¬ 
mines the patriotic character of the future citizen and the destiny of the nation. 
Too great care cannot be taken to protect the impressionable minds of our 
school children against improper history teachings. 

The prime essential of history-teaching to our children is to inculcate whole¬ 
some appreciation of the heroes, ideals and achievements of our country’s past 
and to stimulate right aspirations as to its future. 

The teaching to American children of the revised and much-complained-of 
history text-books can have but one result, and that is to depreciate American 
patriotic thought and degrade national spirit. 

It appears, however, and is shown in detail in this report, that organized 
English and American financial influences insidiously pervade the scholastic 
circles of our country, with the result that American school histories are so 


14 


rewritten as “to give the emphasis to the factors in our national development 
which appeal to them as most vital from the standpoint of to-day.” 

The aim of this “ standpoint of to-day ” seems to be to discredit the Ameri¬ 
can Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution in the minds 
of the American children, as not being the real foundation, bulwark and inspira¬ 
tion of our rights, liberties and ideals, and thus undermine their love for our 
country and sow seeds of disrespect for our sacred institutions. 

In every school history, the story of the American Revolution ought to be 
told with emphasis on the righteousness of the cause for which our forefathers 
fought. 

The men of the Revolution are no longer here to defend the righteousness 
of their cause and we owe a duty to their memory to see that our school histories 
shall teach that they were right in what they did and what they fought for, and 
any history which, after 150 years, attempts to teach our children that the War 
of Independence was an unnecessary war and that it is still a problem as to who 
was right and who wrong, should be fed to the furnace, and those responsible 
for these books branded as un-American. 

I do not for one moment contend that everything contained in our 
American history text-books prior to the pro-English propaganda in 
America was absolutely true. However, those American histories were written 
from the American point of view, intended to awaken love for America and 
for everything American, to instill patriotism in the breasts of the young and 
excite their admiration for the heroic men and splendid women who laid the 
foundation of our independence and made this Nation a fact. 

If any of the old-line history text-books contained any inaccuracies of par¬ 
ticular events, they erred in favor of Americanism, and I, for one, would rather 
have it that way. 

Under the protection of the State educational laws, the Superintendent of 
Schools in the City of New York reigns supreme in our elementary and high 
schools, while the college officials have absolute sway over their respective city- 
owned and city-supported higher educational institutions. 

In the past any suggestion from the city authorities in connection with the 
method and kind of education to be given to our children has been met with an 
outcry of “politics” and “political interference” from those who are suspected 
of being beneficiaries of the various existing funds and foundations used to pro¬ 
mote a certain brand of education and to mould public opinion. Nevertheless, 
these text-books should not be permitted to be used in our schools. 

The following is a study and an analysis of the offending school-history 
text-books. 


15 


AN AMERICAN HISTORY 

Revised, 1920 

By DAVID SAVILLE MUZZEY, Ph.D. 

Barnard College, Columbia University. 

This history is subject to severe criticism from many sources and many 
viewpoints. The opening sentence of the preface is as follows: 

“The present volume represents the newer tendencies in historical 
writing. Its aim is not to tell over once more the old story in the old 
way, but to give the emphasis to those factors in our national development 
which appeal to us as most vital from the standpoint of to-day.” 

It was contended by the critics who appeared before me, that “the newer 
tendencies in historical writing,” proclaimed and followed by Prof. Muzzey, are 
pro-British. Many passages were cited in this book to prove that the author has 
no abiding conviction in American fundamentals, or in the just causes of the 
Revolution, nor any wholesome veneration for the great men who founded our 
Republic. 

On page 90 of his history, in treating of the American Revolution, Prof. 
Muzzey says: 

“This great event has too often been represented as the unanimous 
uprising of a downtrodden people to repel the deliberate, unprovoked 
attack of a tyrant upon their liberties; but when thousands of people in 
the colonies could agree with a noted lawyer of Massachusetts that the 
Revolution was a "causeless, wanton, wicked rebellion,’ and thousands 
of people in England could applaud Pitt’s denunciation of the war against 
America as "barbarous, unjust and diabolical,’ it is evident that, at the 
time at least, there were two opinions as to colonial rights and British 
oppression.” 

Most adult Americans were brought up in the belief that the American 
Revolution was rather a glorious affair, that Burke’s characterization of the 
"‘fierce spirit of liberty” that animated the forefathers of the Republic was no 
mere figure of speech, and that Abraham Lincoln spoke the truth when he de¬ 
scribed it as a ‘"nation conceived in liberty.” Our children, however, if per¬ 
mitted to gain their knowledge of the early history of their country from text¬ 
books such as Muzzey’s, will learn something quite different than did their 
parents. 

In that “there were two opinions” the author is unquestionably correct, but 
in presenting the issues upon which opinion was divided, he teaches (page 106) : 

“When we review, after a century and a half, the chain of events 
which changed the loyal British-Americans of 1763 into rebels in arms 
against their king in 1775, we see that the cause of the Revolution was a 
difference of opinion as to the nature of the British Empire.”-. 


16 


Again, on page 115, he states that it was 

“a debatable question, namely, whether the abuses of the king’s ministers 
justified armed resistance/’ 

This attempt to turn into a “debatable question’’ the hitherto clear and incon¬ 
testable truth that the colonists were right and their oppressor wrong, strikingly 
exemplifies “the newer tendencies in historical writing,” against which patriotic 
protest is properly directed. 

Objection is made to Prof. Muzzey’s characterization of those who engaged 
in demonstrations against the Stamp Act as “the mob” (page 97), because to the 
minds of school children, or even of adults, this is either derogatory of the 
patriots or vindicative of mobs. 

On page 102 Prof. Muzzey refers to Hancock, Warren, Otis and the 
Adamses as patriots, but ironically puts the word patriots in quotation marks. 

In connection with the Revolution he wholly omits mention in his text of 
Nathan Hale, Generals Anthony Wayne, Putnam, Sumter, Pickens, Marion, 
Stark, Sullivan, Knox, Light Horse Harry Lee, Gansevoort, Commodore Barry, 
Sergeant Jasper, Mollie Pitcher, Betsy Ross and the birth of the flag, the 
battles of Bennington and Stony Point, and many other heroic characters and 
events that have thrilled and inspired the school boys and girls in the school 
history of the past. 

The Battle of Lexington is inadequately and inaccurately presented. 

The taking of Ticonderoga is related without detail or spirit. 

The story of Bunker Hill is disposed of in seventeen words. 

All mention of Brandywine, Germantown and Valley Forge is embraced in 
two sentences. 

The glorious career of John Paul Jones is given one sentence. 

In fact, the entire account of the military and naval actions of the Revo¬ 
lution is compressed into less than ten pages, in a book of more than five hundred 
pages. 

It is true that Prof. Muzzey twice in his book avows it to be his theory 
that “military history is useful only for the special student of the science of 
war.” However, it is interesting to observe that in the same book the author 
gives a full page and a half of space, with a full-page map and a foot-note, to a 
detailed military history of the “British victory” at Quebec in 1759. 

According to Prof. Muzzey those nations which gave aid or friendly recogni¬ 
tion to the Americans in the Revolution were actuated by mean, selfish motives, 
and France assisted only after she saw that: 

“The American revolt was a weapon strong enough to use in taking 
revenge on England. * * * Spain joined England’s enemies with the 
hope of regaining the island of Jamaica and the stronghold of Gibraltar; 
Holland, England’s old commercial rival, came into the league for the 
destruction of Britain’s naval power and the overthrow of her colonial 
empire. 


17 


“Thus the American Revolution, after the victory at Saratoga, de¬ 
veloped into a coalition of four powers against Great Britain; and the 
American continent became again, for the fifth time within a century, the 
ground on which France and England fought out their mighty duel.”— 
Pages 118-9. 

Complaint is also made that in Prof. Muzzey’s text American children are 
taught that in the negotiations for peace France sought to betray the interests 
of America, and that America actually did violate her compact and betray the 
interests of France. On pages 127-8 the following appears: 

“It soon became evident to the American diplomats at Paris that 
France was planning to find consolation for her defeated ally, Spain, at 
the expense of her victorious ally, America. 

“The commissioners, following Jay’s advice, disobeyed Congress, 
violated the treaty of alliance with France, and concluded the peace with 
England alone, thereby securing the whole territory from the Atlantic to 
the Mississippi.” 

This has been a matter of long controversy. The best authorities have it 
that France asked nothing for herself, but did want concessions for her other 
ally, Spain. A provisional treaty, which was directly negotiated with Great 
Britain by the American Commissioners, was accepted by France as a signatory 
party. 

“But,” says Prof. Muzzey, on page 128, “it took all the tact and shrewd 
suavity of Benjamin Franklin to make the French ministry accept the terms 
of the treaty with even tolerably good grace.” 

As a matter of truth, the attitude of France toward America throughout the 
Revolutionary period was friendly and her assistance was very helpful, and the 
good grace of the French ministry in agreeing to the treaty was shown by a new 
loan of six million livres to the United States within a few days after the signing 
of the treaty. 

Muzzey, in striving to discredit the whole inspiring story of French aid, tells 
with apparent pride (page 130) that while all other nations were plotting and 
scheming for advantage in the peace terms, England alone was unselfish, upright 
and generous, and that: 

“Europe was amazed at England’s generosity. * * * It was a 

complete if a tardy triumph of that feeling of sympathy for men of com¬ 
mon blood, common language, traditions, and institutions, across the seas.” 

It is true that the French minister, Vergennes, wrote in elation: “The Eng¬ 
lish buy the peace rather than make it. Their concessions as to boundaries, the 
fisheries, the Loyalists, exceed everything I had thought possible.” The same 
joyoug feeling prevailed in America. But the concessions were granted by 
England, not through sympathy and blood affection, but through stern necessity. 
Prof. Muzzey in his account seems to be setting forth his own feeling, rather 
than historic fact. 


18 


Among the causes leading to the War of 1812, Prof. Muzzey relates (page 
183): 

“The next move of the (American) administration was an attempt 
to bribe England and France to bid against each other for our trade.” 

To my mind, this is a most ungraceful form of a very doubtful statement. 
It is not true American history, but typical British propaganda. 

As to the War of 1812, Prof. Muzzey, on page 184, refers to it as: 

“The unfortunate war between the sister nations of the English 
tongue.” 

The first sentence in Prof. Muzzey’s account of that war reads as follows 
(page 180) : 

“The unholy ambition of one man kept the civilized world in a turmoil 
during the first fifteen years of the nineteenth century and stirred war from 
the shores of Lake Erie to the steppes of Russia.” 

The plain import of this is that our “second war for independence” was a 
mere incident in European conflicts. 

We, on the other hand, have been taught that the War of 1812 was an Amer¬ 
ican struggle for freedom of the seas, for the protection of our seamen from 
English impressment, and for the defence of our frontiers against Indian allies 
of Great Britain, armed and urged on to murderous outrages. Every American 
believes that the War of the Revolution won American Independence and that 
the War of 1812 confirmed that Independence in the eyes of foreign nations and 
aroused in our own people a true national consciousness. 

Many other inaccuracies, indicating inattention to real facts in American 
history, have been pointed out in the Muzzey text. 

On page 110 of his book Prof. Muzzey refers to Patrick Henry’s liberty-or- 
death speech as having been delivered in the Virginia House of Burgesses (at 
Williamsburg), when, according to authentic records, it was delivered before 
the Virginia Convention in a church at Richmond. 

This author, page 117, speaks of Cornwallis, instead of Mawhood, as the 
British commander at Princeton. 

On page 120, Ferguson’s force at King’s Mountain is described as “some 
1200 Tory militiamen collected by Colonel Ferguson,” when all early histories 
tell us that he had well disciplined troops and 200 of them were British regulars. 

The author says, on page 152: “Few Americans have been in the habit of 
following the daily business of Congress as Englishmen follow the debates of 
their Parliament.” The liberal space given in our daily newspapers to the hap¬ 
penings in Congress is evidence of the very general interest taken by our people 
in Congressional proceedings. 

On page 188 is described the Battle of New Orleans “as one of the bloodiest 
battles ever fought on American soil.” While it is true that the British loss was 
700 killed and 1,400 wounded, the American loss in that battle was only 17, and 
it is absurd to speak of this battle as bloody in any such sense as Antietam, 


19 


Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, The Wilderness, Spottsylvania, 
Cold Harbor and Chickamauga. 

On page 323 the author says that Breckinridge was nominated for President 
in 1860 at Richmond, whereas the nomination was made at Baltimore. 

With reference to the Presidential election of 1860, on page 325, Prof. 
Muzzey writes that Douglas “would have easily won with the support of the 
united Democratic party.” As a matter of fact, Lincoln’s vote exceeded that of 
the combined opposition in all of the States which he carried, except New Jersey, 
California and Oregon. 

It is not for the inaccuracies pointed out in the Muzzey text, but because of 
his apparent intentional misstatements with respect to the establishment of our 
great Republic and her early period, that Prof. Muzzey’s work is condemned as 
utterly unfit for use in the public schools of New York City. 

It was expected that owing to the exposure and to the vigorous protest on 
the part of American patriots and American patriotic societies, Professor Muzzey 
would re-write his 1923 edition and make it a history of America. The latest 
1923 printing is out, and after reading it I regret to be compelled to state that 
it is unchanged in any important respect from the 1920 edition. 

“A debatable question” has been modified to “a much-debated question.” 
Quotation marks have been removed from the word patriots, when referring to 
American Revolutionary leaders. Apparent unintentional inaccuracies regarding 
the place of Patrick Henry’s liberty-or-4eath speech, the character of Ferguson’s 
forces, the nomination of Douglas and the vote for Lincoln, have been corrected. 


* 


20 


HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE 

1918 

By WILLIS MASON WEST 

Sometime Professor of History and Head of the Department in the University 

of Minnesota. 


The complaints against this text from many sources are that its author is 
an outright propagandist, endeavoring zealously to promote the British design 
of an Anglo-American union. 

The New York City School Committee, in its Report of this author, says: 

‘•Mr. West presents only the views of the Counsel for the crown. 

“The writer is constantly finding defense for the course of action 
taken by the British Government. The American side of the argument is 
entirely ignored. * * * 

“No Wedderburn, no crown advocate could plead the British cause 
in a more bitterly partisan spirit than West has done.” 


Notwithstanding, West’s book continues on the Authorized List for use in 
the New York Schools. 

Prof. West proclaims in the preface to his book that the feature he has 
aimed first to emphasize is: 

“the historical grounds for friendship between America and England, in 
spite of old sins and misunderstandings. 

“Throughout I have not hesitated to portray the weaknesses, blunders 
and sins of democracy.” 



He, in my opinion, herein pleads guilty to the charge of being an English 
propagandist. 

Some of the un-American teachings running through this text-book are: 

“Most of the settlers were ‘servants,’ and a rather worthless lot.”— 
Page 67. 

They were “a bad lot, with the vices of an irresponsible, untrained, 
hopeless class. * * * Cheats and drunkards from this class * * * 

led to crime or suicide.”—Page 72. 

Democracy—“the meanest and worst form of government.”—Page 80. 
“Many of them paid themselves indirectly for their devotion to public 
service by what would today be called graft.”—Page 132. 

“Especially was the public land a source of private riches.”—Page 133. 
“Pettiness and ignorance on the part of the colonists.”—Page 141. 
“Wolfe had only 700 Americans, whom he described as ‘the dirtiest, 
most contemptible, cowardly dogs. * * * such rascals are an en- 

4 * 

cumbrance to an army!”—Page 182. 


21 





“Washington declared that he would have been wholly helpless for a 
long time, had he not had under his command a small troop of English 
soldiers.”—Page 183. 

“Colony after colony, for time after time, had been guilty of sacrific¬ 
ing the safety of a neighbor to sordid parsimony or to mean jealousy.”— 
Page 189. 

Those who took part in the Stamp Act protests, the Boston Tea Party, 
the Boston Massacre and the capture of the Gaspee are referred to as 
“mobs.” 

Some of the colonial leaders are called patriots, but the word is de¬ 
risively saddled with quotation marks. 

The colonists who resisted British tyranny are repeatedly called 
“radicals.” 

At Valley Forge, “nearly a fifth of a starving army deserted to the 
well-fed enemy in Philadelphia.”—Page 236. 

“The Tories, on the whole, represented respectability and refinement.” 
—Page 230. 

“It has been said that at important periods more Americans were 
under arms against independence than for it.”—Page 237. 


In referring to the early struggle of the colonies for independence, the book 
bristles with such sharply denunciatory phrases as “the most horrible form of 
mob violence,” “corruptly-managed sales,” “Congress and the Federal bunch,” 
“Scoundrels graduated into national politics,” etc., etc. 

Prof. West deplores the American Revolution as a calamity which “split 
the English-speaking race,” and on page 178 of his book he says: 

“The conquest of Canada removed the most pressing need of Eng¬ 
lish protection. Far-sighted men had long seen that the colonies might 
be less true to the mother country if the dreaded French power should 
cease to threaten them from the north.” 


What seems to be the only hope Prof. West holds out for America he ex¬ 
presses on page 243, in the following language: 

“Now, after a century and a half, the two great divisions of the 
English-speaking race are coming together once more in sympathetic 
friendship again to ‘double their influence/ ” 

In Prof. West’s recital of the causes of the Revolution the colonists are 
generally made to appear in the wrong. Their grievances are belittled: the 
British oppressions are smoothed away; the great patriot speeches of protest 
and the Declarations of Rights are omitted and the high-minded resistance to 
English tyranny is pictured as mere ruffianism. 

The influences which united the patriot colonists are presented on pages 211, 
213, 215 of this remarkable history text, as follows: 

“Tar and feathers and the ‘birch seal’ became common means of per¬ 
suasion; and Moderates complained bitterly that, in the name of liberty, 
the populace refused all liberty of speech or action.” 


22 


“The radical ‘Patriots’ were probably a minority; but they were 
aggressive and organized, and eventually they whipped into line the great 
body of timid and indifferent people. On the other hand, many earnest 
‘Patriots’ of the preceding period now became ‘Tories’ from repugnance 
to armed rebellion or to mob rule.” 

“Of course the ‘Tories’ had refused to pay any attention to the 
‘illegal’ elections of such provincial conventions. Indeed, in some cases, 
they were even excluded from voting by test oaths. In this way the Radi¬ 
cals came to control the only governments in existence.” 

“The Loyalists early began to accuse the Patriots of aiming at inde¬ 
pendence. But, until some months after Lexington, the Patriots vehe¬ 
mently disavowed such ‘villainy,’ protesting enthusiastic loyalty to King 
George.” 

The following extracts are fairly illustrative of the impressions which Prof. 
West desires to make upon the plastic minds of school children concerning the 
causes of the American Revolution and some of the patriots involved in that 
great struggle for American Independence: 

“The English colonial system had guided and guarded the colonies 
while they needed help and protection. It was not tyrannical. * * * 

Many shrewd observers believed that the Revolution was caused largely 
by dread of ecclesiastical interference.”—Page 185. 

“In growing up, America had grown away from England. * * * 

By 1775 European English and American English could no longer under¬ 
stand each other’s ideas. * * * Both sections of Englishmen clung 

to the doctrine ‘No taxation without representation,’ but these words 
meant one thing in England and a very different thing in America.”— 
Page 187. 

“The problem, however, was not merely about taxation; it was a 
question, also, of maintaining the unity of the British Empire,—the great¬ 
est free state the world had ever seen.”—Pages 188-9. 

“The American Revolution is seen imperfectly, if it is looked upon 
solely as a struggle between England and America. * * * It was a 

part of a thousand-year contest between the English-speaking people and 
their kings for more political liberty. * * * In many ways the Revo¬ 

lution was a true civil war.”—Page 191. 

“Englishmen of that day believed sincerely that the Revolution was 
the work of a group of ‘soreheads.’ George Washington as a youth had 
been refused a coveted commission in the British army, Sam Adams’ 
father had been ruined by the wise British veto of a proposed Massa¬ 
chusetts ‘Land Bank.’ The older Otis had failed to secure an appoint¬ 
ment on the Massachusetts bench. Alexander Hamilton was a penniless 
and briefless law student, with no chance for special advancement unless 
by fishing in troubled waters.”—Page 195. 


23 


“In the Stamp Act period the honest purpose of the English Govern¬ 
ment had been to protect the colonies, not to oppress them.”—Page 200. 

Of the Boston Massacre: “The troops were subjected to constant and 
bitter insult. * * * The mob, no doubt, deserved blame.”—Pages 

201 - 2 . 

Those who studied their American history in days when it was taught for its 
patriotic truth, even if they have since forgotten most of it, must readily sense 
the purpose of the foregoing. 

Of the Bills of Rights of the Revolutionary period Prof. West teaches, on 
page 219: 

“Such as those against excessive bail, cruel or unusual punishments, 
arbitrary imprisonment, and the like, go back to ancient English charters, 
even for their wording. * * * 

“About 1760 this same democratic English literature began deeply 
to affect a few French thinkers like Rousseau, the prophet of the later 
French Revolution. These men stated the old English truths with a new 
French brilliancy; and it is sometimes hard to say whether the American 
leaders drew their doctrines from the French or the older English sources.” 

This is quite different than what formerly was taught in American school 
history, and at variance with the well-substantiated facts. 

In a study of the sources of American institutions Holland looms larger than 
England. It was from Holland that the fathers brought the town meeting, the 
written ballot, the self-government of towns and their representation in a general 
legislature. It was from Holland whence came the doctrine of freedom of speech 
and worship, and the separation of church and state. 

In his book of more than 700 pages Prof. West devotes only forty-seven 
scattered lines, equal to one page and a quarter, to the entire military and naval 
movements of the Revolutionary War. The space generally given to this topic 
in school history is about forty pages. Even Prof. Muzzey gives to it nearly ten 
pages. 

In his page-and-a-quarter account Prof. West necessarily avoids, rather than 
treats, the vital subject. Most of the great characters and events are omitted. 

Bunker Hill is not mentioned. 

Yorktown is given a scant paragraph. 

But, brief as it is, this account would have been better if briefer still, for in 
it the colonists’ glorious deeds are eliminated and the defamations take their place. 
He says: 

“Among the Americans the war developed some excellent generals 
of the second rank—Greene, Arnold, Marion—but many officers were 
incompetent or self-seeking or treacherous.”—Page 231. 

A terrible feature of some raids was the use of Indian allies by the 
English; but it must be remembered that the Americans had first tried to 
secure such allies.”—Page 237. 


24 


“Campaigns in Europe and the West Indies drained England’s re¬ 
sources, glorious though the results were to her arms against those tremen¬ 
dous odds. Meantime, in America, Congress kept its sinking finances afloat 
by generous gifts and huge loans from France. The army, however, was 
dangerously discontented. Desertions to the enemy rose to a hundred or 
two hundred a month.”—Pages 238-9. 

While there was some treachery in the army, in my opinion, it is infamy to 
name Greene and Marion with Arnold in one connection. 

To argue as to which side “first tried” to use Indians as companions in arms, 
would only lead to aimless controversy. There can be, however, no dispute as to 
which side did actually make use of the Indians. According to Bancroft, as early 
as September, 1774, the President of King’s College, now Columbia, an English¬ 
man, published the threat that if the colonists did not submit to the! English 
there would be war and the Indians would be set upon the frontier settlements, 
murdering and scalping. Thus we find that in teaching early American history 
from the pro-British “viewpoint” and in bending his energy to direct American 
thought toward—so called—“Anglo-American understanding,” Dr. Nicholas Mur¬ 
ray Butler, the present President of Columbia University is only following the 
footsteps of his English predecessor. 

Judge Wallace McCamant, President General of the National Society Sons 
of the American Revolution, made this statement concerning the use of Indians 
against the white settlers: 

“The George Rogers Clark expedition does not stand forth pictured 
in all its true colors until we learn that Col. Henry Hamilton, the British 
commander at Detroit, had heavily subsidized the Indians on the frontier, 
from the lakes to the gulf; that it was his plan to let loose on the frontier 
these barbarous warriors, to the end that in 1779 men, women and chil¬ 
dren in our frontier settlements might perish. This was the disaster 
averted by the heroism of the ‘Hannibal of the West’ and his little band 
of riflemen, which is not mentioned in any of these revised histories.” 

No one who reads the horrors of Cherry Valley and other revolting massa¬ 
cres of most barbarous character committed by Indians armed and encouraged by 
the British and Tories, and, in many instances, said to be under command of 
British officers, can have patience for controversy on the subject in a school 
history. 

There is no question that large bribes were offered by the British for desert¬ 
ers. General Joseph Reed spoke the sentiment of the American armies when, 
on receiving an offer of $50,000 if he would forsake his country’s cause, he sent 
back the noble answer: 

“I am not worth purchasing, but such as I am the king of Great 
Britain is not rich enough to buy me.” 


25 


Sir George Otto Trevelyan, whose British history of the American Revolu¬ 
tion is so greatly admired and so largely copied by the modern revisionists, fails 
them on this point, for Trevelyan in Vol IV, on page 52, says: 

“British veterans sorrowfully counted the handful of Americans who 
were attracted by the secure pay and the smart uniform of the Royal 
service, as compared with the tens of thousands who did not shrink from 
the starvation and the threadbare misery which awaited them in the Conti¬ 
nental army.” 

It is worthy to note that, although Prof. West has no space in his book for 
mention of Bunker Hill, or for Saratoga, he gives a half-page to a picture of Col 
Tarleton, whom he proclaims as 

“the commander of ‘Tarleton’s Legion,’ the most famous of all the Loy¬ 
alist regiments.”—Page 238. 

“Most infamous” has always fitted better into American history. Tarleton 
was known in his time as the “Butcher.” He desecrated a flag of truce, disre¬ 
garded the rules of civilized warfare, and his bloodiest victories were over unor¬ 
ganized men and helpless women and children. He achieved nothing but obloquy. 
In an American history, Tarleton manifestly has no place with Gen. Nathaniel 
Greene, who crushed him, but in the West book Gen. Greene is scarcely 
mentioned. 

In this text Andrew Jackson, who as a captive lad was wounded by Tarle¬ 
ton because he would not black his boots, is pictured only in two derisive cartoons, 
while Lafayette, John Stark, Paul Revere, Nathan Hale and a host of other 
patriot heroes are not even mentioned. 

Whatever inspirational effect may be intended by this exaltation of Tarleton, 
is wholly misdirected. It is of a class with the praise of Benedict Arnold by 
another of these revisionists. Since their stated purpose is to bring about 
friendlier relations between America and Great Britain, it were better for them 
if such infamous names as that of Tarleton, instead of being exalted in our school 
histories, were obliterated and forgotten. 

In the same manner as have the other “modern” historians whose texts are 
complained of, Prof. West speaks disparagingly of France and her aid to the 
colonists. He says: 

“To the despotic French Government the alliance was purely a ‘League 
of Hatred.’ ”—Page 235. 

“To large numbers of patriots even the news of the new ally was of 
doubtful cheer. Many began to fear that they had only exchanged the petty 
annoyances of English rule for the slavery of French despotism and of the 
Spanish Inquisition.”—Page 236. 

Whatever ulterior motives, if any, may be imagined to have been hidden in 
the backs of the heads of the French ministers, it is beyond dispute that the 
assistance of France, generously given the colonists, helped incalculably toward 
our independence; and it is not fair to the French people of the past and of the 


26 


present, nor to our own people of the present and of the future, to attempt to 
minimize our gratitude and friendship for France, much less destroy it by means 
of propaganda for British imperialism, inserted in American school history. 

The great significance of the War of 1812, which completed American inde¬ 
pendence, secured undisputed standing to the United States as a nation and gave 
definite impulse to Americanism is grossly distorted in this book in some of the 
following passages: 

“Our foreign relations from 1806 to 1812 were disgraceful.”—Page 
395. 

“Our Government shilly-shallied, in impotent indecision, until the 
energetic part of the nation rose wrathfully to demand that we fight some¬ 
one at once to win back self-respect. Then we chose the wrong time and 
apparently the wrong foe. Unfortunately, too, our choice of a foe arrayed 
us on the side of the European despot against the only hope for European 
freedom.”—Page 395. 

“Young Republicans, or War Hawks, finally brought Madison to their 
side. * * * It was said that Madison yielded to secure necessary War 
Hawk support for his re-election in 1812.”—Page 398. 

“The War Hawks expected to end the war in one glorious campaign 
of conquest.”—Page 399. 

“One disgraceful episode of the war calls for mention. In 1813 an 
American raid burned Toronto (then York), the capital of Lower Canada. 
A British force off our eastern coast retaliated by a raid against our 
capital.”—Page 400. 

“The war originated in blunder. It was conducted discreditably. 
And it was ended without mention of the questions that caused it.”— 
Page 409. 

Perry’s victory is mentioned only in a one-line footnote. 

The Battle of New Orleans is belittled to seven lines. 

Prof. West quite magnanimously excuses Great Britain and accuses the 
United States. America is accused of picking the wrong foe and arraying her¬ 
self on the side of despotism and fighting against European freedom. This is 
not revision, but reversal, of facts. It is not history. In my opinion, it is nothing 
but British propaganda. 

Prof. West, like some of the other latter-day American historians, so called, 
offers excuse for the burning of Washington in the burning of York. It never 
has been ascertained who fired the government buildings at York, but it is known 
and agreed upon by all historians, Canadian as well as American, that, while the 
British were evacuating York and the triumphant Americans were entering, there 
came a terrific explosion of a British powder magazine, the location of which had 
been unsuspected by the Americans, and that 52 Americans were killed and 180 
wounded. On the other hand, it is confessed that the burning of Washington 
by the British was done “under strict orders from the Government at home.” 


27 


The Canadian historian, Murray, in his Historical and Descriptive Account 
of British America, in Vol. 1, page 230, says, concerning the firing by the English 
of the powder magazine at York: 

“The firing of this mine was undoubtedly a most barbarous and 
unjustifiable act on the part of the British. Their defeat was already 
inevitable, and they knew the explosion could not affect the result. It was 
therefore a wanton destruction of life, as cowardly as it was cruel, with¬ 
out any expectation of benefit to themselves.” 

Before the destruction of York, the British had destroyed Frenchtown, 
Frederick, Georgetown and Havre de Grace and had committed outrages at 
Hampton. 

There is, perhaps, no good reason why outrages should be dwelt upon in 
school history. There is certainly no good reason for them to be excused, or 
for shifting the long-settled odium from the British to the Americans, upon no 
better authority than British propaganda. 

As to America’s motive in the War with Mexico, Prof. West teaches, on 
page 515: 

“The West was eager for more territory, and had few scruples 
against fighting Mexico to get it.” 

In an attempt to teach American children that our war for the preservation 
of the Union could not have been won but for English friendship, her com¬ 
mercial sacrifices and “heroic support,” Prof. West devotes three times as much 
space as he does to all the military movements of the Revolution. 

One sentence is expressive of the spirit of five pages: 

“The North, then, had great cause, not always duly recognized, for 
deep gratitude to the sound heart of the English masses, who felt dimly 
that the Union was fighting slavery, even while Unionists denied it loudly, 
and who therefore gave the North a heroic support through cruel priva¬ 
tions—in many ways as severe as those borne by Americans.”—Page 577. 

Our war with Spain, Prof. West teaches our children, was won not through 
American strength and valor, but through the friendship of England, which pre¬ 
vented Germany from enlisting all Europe on the side of Spain. 

Our motive in that war, as given by West, was not the liberation of Cuba, 
but because (page 633): 

“American capitalists had large interests in the sugar industry in the 
island, and used powerful influences, open and secret, to secure American 
intervention, with a view to subsequent annexation.” 

As to our country’s safe survival of the first three and a half years of the 
World War, Prof. West gives this familiar British explanation: 

“Our fancied security, unprepared for war as we were, was due only 
to the protecting shield of England’s fleet.”—Page 720. 

From all this it appears to be Prof. West’s fixed purpose to imbue American 
school children with the idea that America is a wayward, wandering, weak and 
helpless child which must return to the loving mother arms of the British Empire. 


28 


SCHOOL HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Revised, 1920 

By ALBERT BUSHNELL HART, LL.D. 

Professor of Government, Harvard University. 

This book is said to be among the history texts most extensively in use 
throughout the United States, and it is one of those most seriously complained 
against. 

“Why should a new school history of the United States be written?” 

This is a pertinent query. Prof. Hart has recognized it as such; he has 
asked himself that question in the opening sentence of his preface, and answers 
it as follows: 

“Chiefly to put at the disposition of the upper grades a book embody¬ 
ing a broadly national point of view and presenting adequate treatment 
of certain topics which hitherto have been too little stressed in the study 
of American history. 

“The European background of our history is clearly sketched, with 
due recognition of our inheritance of language, law and political methods 
from England. Due attention is also paid to other influences from over¬ 
seas.” 

The objection to Prof. Hart’s book is that in it he has given entirely too much 
attention to the influences from overseas and very little to American influences. 

In Prof. Hart’s “certain topics which hitherto have been too little stressed” 
appear such as these: 

“The colonists liked to think of themselves as part of the British 
Empire. * * * They were proud of being Britons. * * * They were 
as well off as any other people in the world.”—Page 120. 

“ The colonists were not desperately oppressed. They enjoyed more 
freedom and self-government than the people in England.”—Page 126. 

“The real reason for the Revolution was that, since the people were 
more used to free government than the English at home, they looked upon 
every effort of Parliament to tax them as an effort to deprive them of 
part of their freedom.”—Page 126. 

“Thousands of good people sincerely loved Great Britain and were 
loyal to King George. * * * The loyalists were harshly put down.”— 
Page 145. 

During the height of the official British propaganda campaign in this coun¬ 
try, in 1916-17, designed to draw us into the World War, Prof. Plart in his 
“New American History,” edition of 1917, was teaching of the colonists that 

“They professed and doubtless felt the warmest attachment to the 
king, whom God and Parliament had provided for them. * * * 


29 


“The great reason for the division of the British Empire into two 
parts seems to be that the Colonists were so free and did so many things 
for themselves that they could not see why they should not be relieved 
from almost all restraints.”—Page 126. 

The worthy Professor seemed to overlook the fact that the real reasons for 
the Revolution were clearly set forth by the colonists themselves in the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence, and that to the remedy of these grievances and to the 
cause of liberty they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. 

Although writing 145 years after the signing of the Declaration of Inde¬ 
pendence, Prof. Hart and his “modern” contemporaries claim that because of 
their advantages of “modern historical scholarship,” of “the newer tendencies in 
historical writing” and of “other influences from overseas,” they are in a better 
position to know the conditions of the colonists and the causes which led to the 
War of the Rebellion than were the colonists themselves. 

The American Declaration of Independence, which has been accepted by the 
world and is consecrated in the minds of the American people, must stand as 
the truth, at least until there shall be presented against it far better evidence 
than the unsupported assertions of apparently Anglicized American history 
revisionists. 

Prof. Hart in his book not only discredits the cause of the patriots, but he 
sweepingly defames their characters. 

Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson are slurred, and 
the soldiers of the Revolution are maligned, while the Tories Hutchinson and 
Galloway are called “honest men.” 

Of the soldiers of the Revolution, whose patriotic zeal, devotion and cour¬ 
age through terrible hardships and suffering have always been the pride and 
inspiration of American youth, Prof. Hart tells American children that: 

“Many served from the purest motives of patriotism, but others were 
drawn into the army by money, bounties and promises of land.”—Page 134. 

Of Samuel Adams, Prof. Hart teaches: 

“He was a shrewd, hard-headed politician.”—Page 125. 

This is the only reference in the book to the personal character of the man 
who was the greatest single factor in bringing about the Revolution. 

Prof. Hart joins with Professors Muzzey, McLaughlin and Van Tyne 
in teaching of Alexander Hamilton that he 

“is said once to have exclaimed: ‘Your people, Sir, is a great beast!’ ”— 
Page 151. 

In referring to Thomas Jefferson, Prof. Hart states that Jefferson’s political 
opponents, the Federalists, 

“looked upon him as an atheist, a liar and a demagogue.”—Page 190. 


30 


The Professor then proceeds to state that Jefferson, however, was not an 
atheist, because “he liked to read the New Testament”; but as to his being “a 
liar and a demagogue,” the author answers by explaining of Jefferson that: 

“He was a reserved man and did not tell everybody all that he knew, 
and hence some thought him false.” 

The unfortunate part of all this is that the Professor’s first reference to 
Jefferson will stay in the child mind, and not his explanation. That this is the 
main thing even in the mind of Prof., Hart appears in the first of his questions 
at the end of the lesson, which reads: 

“What did Jefferson’s enemies think about him?”—Page 203. 

Such defamation of these great patriot leaders appears all the more repre¬ 
hensible when brought into contrast with the same author’s laudation of promi¬ 
nent Tories. On page 127 of his text, Prof. Hart teaches that: 

“Some honest men, like Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts, 
thought the colonists ought not to insist on their rights. Others, like 
Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania, were in favor of protesting and then 
accepting whatever decision might be made in England.” 

These two whom Hart sets up as “honest men” were not so regarded by 
the colonial patriots. Both were Tories, and it was said at that time that Hutch¬ 
inson was a hypocrite and Galloway a spy for the British. There is abundant 
evidence to sustain that contention, and only historical rewriters, confessing 
“due attention” to “influences from overseas,” would have the nerve to trans¬ 
form Hutchinson and Galloway from hypocrite and spy into “honest men.” 

Of the battles of Lexington and Concord, where was “fired the shot heard 
round the world,” Prof. Hart tells in a single paragraph: and, although all 
authorities are to the effect that the British fired first at Lexington, the professor 
in his history states that: 

“A shot was fired, probably by the English.”—Page 131. 

The great American historians, Bancroft, Hildreth, Higginson and Lossing, 
are of one mind that the British fired first, and the British historians, Green, 
Lecky and Trevelyan concur. Many good authorities are to the further effect 
that the British commander, Major Pitcairn, himself fired the first shot. 

Fiske, who in his masterly work has summed up the facts and opinions pre¬ 
sented by all preceding American historians concerning the beginning of the 
fight at Lexington, says in his account: 

“ ‘Disperse, ye villains!’ shouted Pitcairn, ‘Damn you, why don’t you 
disperse?’ And as they stood motionless, he gave the order to fire. As 
the soldiers hesitated to obey, he discharged his own pistol and repeated 
the order, whereupon a deadly volley slew eight of the minute men and 
wounded ten.” 


31 


In his “New American History/’ published in 1917, Prof. Hart cites the fol¬ 
lowing authority for his statement that the first shot at Lexington was “probably” 
fired by the English: 

“It is uncertain how the fight began; an English officer who was 
present at the battle says: ‘On our approach they dispersed, and soon after 
the firing began; but which party fired first I cannot exactly say, as our 
troops rushed on shouting and huzzaing previous to the fighting.” 

So it is solely the word of a British officer, who confessed he did not know, 
which Prof. Hart has set up against the word of scores of American patriots 
who did know, and against all American historical evidences and authorities. 

At the time Hart’s “New American History,” 1917, quoting his “British 
officer,” was issued, Sir Gilbert Parker had been more than two years in Amer¬ 
ica, with a large organized staff of British propagandists, and this was a part 
of their propaganda. Parker has since stated in a Harper’s Magazine article 
(March, 1918) that his work of pro-English propaganda was particularly “effec¬ 
tive in universities and colleges.” The saddest part of it all is that what Parker 
then put over as British propaganda, many college professors still go on teaching 
as solemn truth. 

However, at best, there is no educational value in speculation and contro¬ 
versy as to which side fired first. The value all lies in a vivid and stirring pic¬ 
ture of the brave stand taken by a half-hundred undrilled minute men against 
several hundred trained British troops, and not dipersing until they had paid 
blood tribute to the patriot cause. 

To the Battle of Bunker Hill Prof. Hart gives only six lines, and these are 
so utterly lacking in patriotic spirit that the word patriots appears in quotation 
marks. 

This first set battle of the Revolution is one of the most dramatic and decisive 
events in world history. The intense spirit of resistance it exemplified and en¬ 
gendered fused all the colonies into one common cause. To the American 
writer of American school history this is the best topic afforded for inculcation 
of patriotic pride, devotion, idealism and aspiration. Prof. Hart dismisses it as 
an incident of no importance. 

Prof. Hart joins with other revisionists in belittling the Continental Con¬ 
gress. On page 150, he teaches: 

“Not until after Burgoyne’s army was captured did Congress pluck 
up courage to complete the form of union.” 

A state of mind is a matter not of ascertainable fact but of mere inference, 
and this particular inference, being derogatory, is improper for school history. 

Concerning the causes of the War of 1812, Prof. Hart teaches that the 
Indian outbreak in the Northwest was “mistakenly supposed” to be stirred up by 


32 


British agents. And the finally impelling motive for the American declaration 
of war in 1812 is interpreted by him as follows, on page 205: 

“Madison still wanted peace and so did his Secretary of the Treas¬ 
ury, Gallatin. * * * However, they could not stand out against the 

‘War Hawks/ a group of young men * * * who proposed to conquer 

Canada and insist on terms of peace at Quebec or Halifax. Nothing 
seemed easier, for by this time there were about 7,000,000 Americans, and 
the whole population of Canada was not more than 450,000. In June, 1812, 
therefore, war was declared by about two-thirds majority of Congress.” 

The indisputable fact is that Gen. William Henry Harrison, Governor of the 
Northwest Territory and in command on our western border, had written Presi¬ 
dent Madison that he found the hostile Indians fully supplied with British army 
muskets and with military stores bearing the name of the British government 
Unless this official testimony of “Old Tippecanoe” is to be discarded as worthless, 
the Indians were not “mistakenly supposed” to be incited by the British. 

The insinuation that the disproportion in population between the United 
States and Canada rendered the odds strongly in American favor, is misleading. 
It was not Canada alone, but the whole powerful British Empire, with which 
America went to war. Canada was not won, it is true, but the whole force of 
the British Empire was whipped—with Jackson’s glorious victory at New Orleans 
thrown in for good measure. 

Referring to the state of the American militia during the War of 1812, Prof. 
Hart says, on page 207: 

“The crowning disgrace was the landing of a British force of about 
5,000 men on the coast of Chesapeake Bay, and their march overland as 
though they were going to a picnic, till they captured Washington (1814). 
Within a circle of sixty miles from the Capital lived not less than a hun¬ 
dred thousand able-bodied Americans accustomed to the use of a gun; but 
the British were allowed to burn the public buildings and to return to their 
fleet, almost without losing a man. 

“What was the matter? Not lack of men, for in the course of the 
war about 500,000 different Americans were enlisted as soldiers, mostly 
for brief service. There was no shortness of funds, though the govern¬ 
ment had to pay high for what it borrowed. The trouble was that Madison 
and his military advisers were weak and incapable. The Secretary of War, 
John Armstrong, was the man who was responsible for the loss of Wash¬ 
ington. To be sure, the roads were bad and it was hard to send men and 
supplies to the front; but somehow the Canadians marched over just as 
bad roads and managed to reach the desired places.” 

All the so-called modern revisionists, in excuse for their omission or minim¬ 
ization of American victories and heroic incidents, plead that there is not enough 
space in school history for “battles, marches and sieges” and for discussion of 
movements which belong to the science of war. Yet they seize upon every 


33 


opportunity to expatiate to the derogation of America. Prof. Hart in this 
instance devotes twice as much space to discussing a controversial question, which 
belongs exclusively to military science, as he gives to Lexington and Concord 
together, and more than three times what he gives to Bunker Hill. 

It is true that the burning of Washington was “a crowning disgrace”—but 
the disgrace rests not upon the Americans, as Prof. Hart would have children 
think, but upon the British. The English historian Green in his “History of the 
English People/’ says of it: 

“Few more shameful acts are recorded in our (British) history; and 
it was the more shameful in that it was done under strict orders from the 
government at home.” 

The well-organized British force, acting under definite orders, knew exactly 
where it was going and what it was going to do. The unorganized American 
militia could not have known what was being attempted until after it had been 
done. It was a matter not of cowardice or incompetency on the one side, but of 
an undreamed-of return to practices of barbarism on the other. 

Tossing, in his Pictorial Field Book of the War of 1812, in writing of the 
British outrage of all rules of civilized warfare in burning Washington, says: 

“Up to this time, the conduct of the British had been in accordance 
with the rules of modern warfare. Now they abandoned them, and on 
entering the National Capitol, they performed deeds worthy only of bar¬ 
barians. They wantonly destroyed the public edifices having no relation 
in their structure to operations of war, nor used at the time for military 
annoyance, some of these edifices being also costly monuments of taste 
and of the arts, and others depositaries of the public archives, and only 
precious to the nation as a memorial of its origin and its early transactions, 
and interesting to all nations as contributions to the general stock of his¬ 
torical instruction and political science. 

“The British Annual Register for 1814 denounced the proceedings as 
‘A return to the time of barbarism.’ ‘It cannot be concealed,’ the writer 
continued, ‘that the extent of devastation practiced by the victors brought 
a heavy censure upon the British character, not only in America, but on 
the continent of Europe.’ 

“To the credit of General Ross be it said that when he was ordered to 
destroy the public buildings at Washington, he demurred, saying that 
they had carried on the war on the Peninsula and in France, with a very 
different spirit, and that he could not sanction the destruction of public 
or private property with the exception of military structures and war-like 
stores. It was not until he was warmly pressed that Ross consented to 
destroy the Capitol and the President’s house. ‘Fortunately for Ross’s 
sensibility, there was a titled incendiary at hand in the person of Admiral 
Sir George Cockburn, who delighted in such inhumane work, and who 
literally became his torch-bearer.’ ” 


34 


Prof. Hart and several other school history revisionists seek to excuse this 
English act of vandalism and shift the odium upon the American militia. In 
doing so, they defy the facts which have been accepted on both sides for more 
than a century. 

Prof. Hart’s text-book can only have a most baleful influence upon school 
children, for it is destructive of patriotic pride and tends to deaden patriotic 
spirit. 

The New York City Public School Committee condemned many passages in 
this book, but the book remains on the List of Authorized Texts for use in the 
public schools of the City. 


35 


A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES FOR SCHOOLS 

Revised, 1919 
By 

Andrew c. McLaughlin, a.m., ll.b. 

Head of the Department of History, University of Chicago 

And 

CLAUDE H. VAN TYNE, Ph.D. 

Head of the Department of History, University of Michigan. 

Objections submitted and sustained against the McLaughlin and Van Tyne 
text are that it teaches: 

That there is little use trying to learn whose fault it was that the 
Revolutionary War began; 

That the Declaration of Independence was largely plagiarized from 
English writings; 

That the United States Constitution was copied after the British 
Constitution; 

That many of the long-cherished stories in American history are 
“yarns”; 

That many revered patriot leaders were disreputable characters; 

That many of our most inspiriting slogans are not genuine; 

That “we can afford now to laugh at our forefathers.” 

Objection has been made that in this text-book the British oppressions of 
the American colonists are so plausibly condoned, or completely suppressed, that 
no ground is left which seems to justify the statement of grievances in the 
Declaration of Independence or the armed resistance in Revolution. 

It has been further charged that the history of the American Revolution is 
in this text reshaped to conform with definite British propaganda for the cultiva¬ 
tion of the “international mind,” in behalf of imperialistic interests, and that its 
teachings to American children are poisonous to their patrotic spirit. 

In the preface these authors proclaim: 

“We make no apology for the omission of many of the ‘yarns’ of 
American history. * * * 

“By means of this elimination we have secured space for fuller ex¬ 
planation and interpretation of really important events.” 

They omit mention of Nathan Hale, Faneuil Hall, the Green Mountain Boys, 
Betsy Ross and the birth of the flag, the quartering of troops and the British 
attempts to bribe, and they minimize the patriot valor at Lexington, Bunker Hill 
and New Orleans. 

These “yarns,” now omitted, have always heretofore been deemed impor¬ 
tant in American school history. They are as important now as they ever were 


36 


—perhaps more important now than ever before, since the staunch national spirit 
they helped to engender is being insidiously undermined. 

The “really important events/’ for which these authors secure space by 
omitting what they term “yarns” are such as these: 

“England was, on the whole, more generous to her colonies than were 
other nations to theirs.”—Page 139. 

“Though the country must have been almost equally divided, the 
Whigs were most active, and succeeded in electing a Congress bent upon 
defending ‘American liberties.’ ”—Page 156. 

“As a Tory wrote, in Washington’s camp the soldier had thirteen 
kings and no bread, and it seemed better to serve one king and have plenty 
of bread.”—Page 178. 

“It is from a study of this struggle between Whigs and Tories that 
we see the American Revolution to' have been a civil war in America as 
well as a war between England and her rebellious colonies.”—Page 183. 

It is difficult to understand how any mind, or any pair of professorial minds, 
can regard such things as more “really important events” in American history 
than the inspiring incidents and heroic characters which have been omitted to 
make space for them. 

McLaughlin and Van Tyne appear to have been the first of the Anglophile 
revisionists. The first edition of their school history, issued in 1911, distorts 
many truths regarding Anglo-American relations, to the disparagement of Amer¬ 
ica and exaltation of Great Britain. 

In their 1919 revision McLaughlin and Van Tyne have a complete chapter of 
15 pages on “How Europe Influenced America, 1607-1815,” which did not appear 
in their 1911 edition. 

In this new chapter opportunity is taken: 

1. To set up Magna Charta as the chief source of our liberties; 

2. To discredit the Declaration of Independence as a plagiarism; 

3. To contend at length that the United States Constitution is a mere writ¬ 
ten copy of the unwritten British constitution. 

These authors devote a great deal of space in stating in detail how John 
Locke, an Englishman, had written about liberty long before the Declaration of 
Independence was formulated; that in his writings “Locke expressed essentially 
the same ideas” and that the same sounded “very much like what we read in 
the American Declaration of Independence.”—Page 199. 

The United States Constitution, according to this school history, differs 
from the English constitution only: 

“in that most of it is included in a single document, while the English 
constitution is made up of many laws, court decisions and customs,” etc., 
etc.—Page 197. 


37 


The argument in support of this theory, taking up a page and a half in the 
new chapter, is a mere restatement of Sir Gilbert Parker’s official British propa¬ 
ganda material with which our country has been flooded in recent years. 

The chapter on the War with Spain has been revised and the seventeen lines 
of tribute to Dewey’s victory and Hobson’s heroism, which appeared in the 
1911 edition, have been removed in 1919, to make space for the moot Diederichs 
incident in Manila Bay, and to expatiate how “Thus British friendship saved us.” 

Comparison of the two editions discloses many other alterations in the text, 
all conforming to up-to-date British propaganda. 

Leading founders of our liberties are characterized as follows: 

“It is hard for us to realize how ignorant and superstitious were 
most of the early colonists of America.”—Page 134. 

“Patrick Henry, a gay, unprosperous and hitherto unknown country 
lawyer.”—Page 141. 

“Smuggling was so common that even a leading Boston merchant 
was known as ‘the Prince of Smugglers.’ ”—Page 140. 

“As the British soldiers who had left Boston at midnight neared 
Lexington in the early morning of April 19, 1775, Adams and Hancock 
stole away across the fields.”—Page 153. 

“Independence was not seriously thought of, except by a very few 
men like Samuel Adams. Great men and good patriots like Washington 
and Franklin were loath to think of such an outcome of the quarrel.”— 
Page 162. 

“Hamilton is said to have exclaimed at a banquet once, ‘Your people, 
Sir, is a great beast.’ ”—Page 238. 

“On the 4th of July, 1801, voters of a town in Connecticut drank to 
the toast: ‘Thomas Jefferson: May he receive from his fellow citizens the 
reward of his merit—a halter!’ ”—Page 249. 

“We can afford now to laugh at our forefathers.”—Page 262. 

It is not to be denied that these great and good men, who here are so flip¬ 
pantly defamed, were human and had their human faults and limitations. How¬ 
ever, it is not their personal faults that are most important to us. In their faults 
there is little educational value, but their transcendant virtues, heroisms, sacri¬ 
fices, abilities and achievements, peculiar to themselves, and outstanding above 
those of any other set of men of any period, constitute vitalizing and inspiring 
educational material. 

Nearly all of the herein mentioned historical revisionists are found to be 
at every opportunity harping upon the faults or failures of American leaders. 
This is naturally to be expected in British histories in relation to American 
affairs, but its transfer from British histories to American school histories is 
not natural, and should not be tolerated. 

The truth regarding the noble characters, exalted ideals, immortal words 
and heroic deeds of the founders of our Republic, as it has been handed down to 


38 


us through honest American historians, is the most precious possession of any 
people on earth, and should be transmitted unsullied to posterity. 

Jackson, Monroe, Clay and other great leaders have not escaped criticism in 
this McLaughlin-Van Tyne history book. 

Of Jackson they teach: 

That he was rough and uncultured. 

That he “disliked the bank because its stockholders and managers 
were his political enemies.” 

That he put the public moneys into “pet banks.” 

That Jackson was “rough” and “uncultured” is not as important in educa¬ 
tional value as that, despite educational limitations and handicaps, he was a great 
soldier, a good statesman and a model patriot. In his force of character, direct¬ 
ness of methods and freedom from conventionalism he was a new type, and has 
been well described as the first genuine representative of democracy. Jackson’s 
intense earnestness and strict honesty have been securely woven into the very 
fabric of our republic. His noble qualities of mind and heart, his unselfish pur¬ 
poses and his lasting achievements will fill to overflowing all the space that can 
be found for him in any school history. 

Another of the great makers of America whom these authors “damn with 
faint praise” is James Monroe, twice elected President, the second time by every 
vote in the electoral college but one. Of him, on page 272 they say: 

“He was only a gallant officer of the lower rank in the Revolution, 
a fairly good diplomat who happened to have a hand in the Louisiana 
Purchase, and only an ordinary Secretary of State under Madison, but 
he was the choice of the Republican party leaders, Madison and Jefferson.” 

The name of Monroe, for a hundred years, has been known and respected 
in every civilized country, and had President Monroe never done anything else 
than promulgate the Monroe Doctrine he still would stand out as one of the 
greatest constructive forces in our national life. 

Monroe was a mere boy in the Revolution, and at eighteen was promoted 
to a captaincy because of his bravery. He was twice Governor of Virginia, Min¬ 
ister to England, to France and to Spain. He was Secretary of State and later 
Secretary of War through the War of 1812. These facts are better fitted for 
school history than is a sneering comment. 

Regarding Henry Clay these authors are teaching as follows: 

“There had been a Meal/ they asserted, and Clay, ‘Judas of the West/ 
had sold his influence to Adams for the office of Secretary of State.” 
—Page 286. 

Party strife was bitter in the days of Clay, and extremely harsh words were 
often used by partisans against opponents. No public character, of that, this 
or any other period, is justly described in a heated phrase of a bitter opponent. 
Yet these authors and other history revisionists show a peculiar fondness for this 


39 


unfair method of estimating the characters of American leaders. It is by this 
method that Thomas Jefferson is presented to school children as deserving of 
“a halter. ,, 

Not content with disparagement of heroic characters, these co-authors pro¬ 
ceed to discredit their immortal words. Maxims and slogans with which every 
school child has been familiar in the past are now pronounced as not authentic. 

Of Lawrence’s last brave words, “Don’t give up the ship,” these authors 

say: 

“ ‘Fight the ship until she is sunk’ seem to have been his real words, 
and the others are the words of the boy who took his message on deck.” 
—Page 265. 

The authenticity of this slogan was accepted by Commodore Perry when he 
had it emblazoned on his battle-flag at the victory of Lake Erie, and this is one 
of the most fondly-cherished slogans in the United States Navy still. No edu¬ 
cational advantage is gained by questioning its genuineness, and the only effect 
on the school child’s mind of such petty cavilling is to weaken confidence in any 
truth of history. 

Of Ethan Allen’s demand upon the commanding officer at Ticonderoga to 
surrender “In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress,” 
these authors remark in a foot-note, page 157: 

“So Allen afterwards declared. He had no right to demand the fort 
in the name of the Continental Congress, for his commission was from 
Connecticut.”—Page 157. 

Here they quibble over trifling points, to the obscuration of the splendidly 
dramatic manner in which Allen and his men, without firing a shot, won a fort 
which cost the British eight million sterling, a succession of campaigns and 
many lives. Allen’s demand was made in the hearing of many men who con¬ 
firmed all that “Allen afterwards declared.” 

The causes of the Revolution are in this text-book obscured, and the student 
seeking here the principles and motives of the colonists will find only omissions, 
contradictions and confusion. 

On page 144, these historians state that: 

“The great objection raised by the Americans was that they were 
taxed by the Parliament without being represented in it.” 

On page 146 they go on and say that: 

“The king and his obedient ministers now thought that they must 
crush what they considered to be a spirit of rebellion. * * * A second 

mistake was the sending to America of an inadequate force of soldiers, 
which only irritated and did not cow the colonists.” 

The authors frequently tell what the king thought, how his ministers felt 
and what his generals hoped. In this instance the word “mistake” has applica¬ 
tion only from the British standpoint. What the authors clearly mean to teach 


40 


is that if a larger British force had been sent, the colonists might not have been 
irritated but would have been cowed. 

In their endeavor to define the causes of the Revolution, these authors state: 

“There is little use trying to learn whose fault it was that the war 
began, for, as we have seen, such a long train of events led to disagreement 
between England and America that we should have to go back and back 
to the very founding of the colonies. As in most quarrels, the blame for 
beginning is laid by each party on the other.”—Page 152. 

It is amazing that men who confess they do not know why the American 
Revolution began should have felt themselves called upon to write American 
school history. 

McLaughlin and Van Tyne attempt to extract the glory from the Fourth 
of July. On pages 163-4 they teach: 

“The reason we celebrate the Fourth instead of the second of July 
is that most men thought more about the day Congress voted to accept 
a declaration drawn up by Thomas Jefferson explaining to the world the 
reasons for making the resolution of independence. 

“A list of twenty-seven grievances was given, some of which seem 
unreasonable now, but others constituted real wrongs.” 

The enthusiastic jubilation of the patriots, following the Declaration, July 
4th, 1776, is thus referred to: 

“Among the Whigs, or Patriots, the news was joyfully received. 
Some thoughtless people went too far and did foolish things, like 
burning an effigy of the king or burning his portrait in a public square. 
In New York City the American soldiers pulled down a leaden statue 
of George III and melted it into bullets.”—Page 164. 

It was peculiarly proper that the statue of King George was turned into 
bullets to shoot his oppression and sovereignty out of this land. No better use 
for a king’s statue ever was found in America. 

Of France’s motive in coming to the aid of America, on page 175-6, they 

say: 

“England and France had long been enemies. Many bitter wars 
had been fought between them, but none more bitter than that for 
ownership of America, which was decided in England’s favor when 
Wolfe captured Quebec. From that hour French statesmen watched for 
a time when England should be weakened and when France might avenge 
her shame and regain her power.” 

Regarding the War of 1812 these authors teach, on page 261: 

“To make war on England, however, was, in fact, to join Napoleon, 
her implacable enemy, so that the world witnessed the strange alliance 
of James Madison, lover of peace, and Napoleon Bonaparte, the genius 
of war.” 


41 


In their summary of the results of that war they state, on pages 270-1: 

“Of the War of 1812 one feels like asking with Little Peterkin, 
‘what good came of it at last?’ Some 30,000 men had been lost and 
about $200,000,000 had been spent on wasteful war. America’s shipping 
was almost destroyed and trade had suffered great losses, and yet no 
principle for which she had fought was settled.” 

The fact of the matter is, that the result of the War of 1812 settled for¬ 
ever the British claim of its right to impress American seamen. The British 
encouragement of Indian outrages upon our western border was ended. 

Results even more important than the foregoing are cited by Carl Schurz 
in his “Life of Henry Clay”: 

“The War of 1812, with all the losses in blood and treasure entailed 
by it, and in spite of the peace which ignored the declared causes of 
the war, transformed the American Republic, in the estimation of the 
world, from a feeble experimental curiosity into a power—a world power, 
full of brains and with visible claws and teeth. It made the American 
people, who had so far consisted of the peoples of so many little com¬ 
monwealths, not seldom wondering whether they could profitably stay 
long together, a consciously united nation with a common country, a 
great country, worth fighting for, and a common national destiny— 
nobody could say how great—and a common national pride, at that 
time filling every American heart brim-full.” 

The justice of the American cause in the Mexican War is more than ques¬ 
tioned in this book. In a foot-note on page 323 these authors say: 

“There is still room for question as to whether we were right in 
fighting Mexico, and scholars differ. Our patience was sorely tried, 
but a little fairness, a little more patience, and a little more generosity 
might have made war unnecessary. Polk’s method of blaming Mexico 
reminds one of the soldier who came into camp with a dead sheep over 
his shoulder, though foraging was forbidden. ‘No sheep can bite me and 
live/ he said.” 

Time and events have amply vindicated the justness and necessity of the 
Mexican War, and the n\ere fact that “scholars differ”—as it ever is their chief 
vocation—furnishes no reason for shadowing with doubt the true motives and 
actions of our fathers in the minds of our children. 

Space which these authors say they have secured for “really important 
events,” by omitting old inspiriting “yarns,” is lavishly devoted to a half-page 
reproduction of a British cartoon of the Revolutionary period, caricaturing Amer¬ 
ica as a rattlesnake. 

Another half-page cartoon ridicules Lincoln as being ridden on a rail. 

A cartoon of Woodrow Wilson’s “Wonderful Control” on affairs still current 
and controversial, occupies one-quarter of page 457. 


42 

The patriots frequently used the rattlesnake as an emblem, and their own 
applications of it formerly appeared in school histories. The. revisionists substi¬ 
tute for it a hostile conception. 

These cartoons, feebly conceived and crudely drawn, have no educational 
values. Such use of space, which has been gained by ruthless elimination of 
patriotic characters and incidents, would be incomprehensible but for the fact 
that it is in perfect accord with the Anglicized spirit and purpose, shown by these 
authors throughout their book, to distort, belittle and ridicule the great leaders 
and vital truths in American history to the minds of American school children, 
the American citizenry of the future. 


43 


OUR UNITED STATES 

1919—Revised, 1923 

By WILLIAM BACKUS GUITTEAU, Ph.D. 

Director of Schools, Toledo, Ohio 

In the announcement of the 1919 edition of this textbook, its publishers 
stated: 

“This book has been written in the light of recent events in which 
a new atmosphere has been created for the study of our national life. 

“The Revolutionary War and subsequent Anglo-American difficulties, 
hitherto distorted in our school books as a result of national prejudice, 
have been restated by Dr. Guitteau. * * * 

“Many events involved in the history of our foreign relations, hitherto 
distorted in our school books, through an unthinking adherence to tradi¬ 
tional prejudices, have been restated by Dr. Guitteau in their true light.” 

Prof. Guitteau in his preface elaborated upon this promise to correct in our 
school children the “unthinking adherence to traditional prejudices,” as follows: 

“The momentous events of the last five years have demonstrated con¬ 
clusively that our history text-books must be written from a new view¬ 
point. * * * 

“The American Revolution, for example, is no longer to be studied 
as an isolated event resulting from British injustice. * * * 

“So with the War of 1812, which takes on a new aspect when viewed 
as an incident in the Napoleonic wars rather than as a British-American 
contest. 

“Throughout this book, therefore, special emphasis has been placed 
upon the relation of the United States to other countries, in order that the 
young citizens who study it may realize more fully the importance of our 
world relations and our world responsibilities. * * * 

“In this way an impartial judgment may be passed upon our interna¬ 
tional relations.”—Page V. 

Accordingly, throughout this text for the instruction of American school 
children, the long-accepted versions of the treatment of the Colonies by England 
and the inspiring references and descriptions of our national heroes, ideals 
and achievements are eliminated, and matters more in harmony with the “light 
of recent events,” intended to wipe out “unthinking adherence to traditional 
prejudices,” are substituted. 

To the credit of Prof. Guitteau it must be said that, like Prof. Everett 
Barnes, he has seen a new light since my investigation of his history has been 
made, because in his 1923 edition he has revised his text-book. 

I do not wish to be understood as stating that, because Prof. Guitteau has 
so completely changed his proclaimed purpose, his 1923 revision is wholly free 


44 


from criticism, for many passages complained against in the 1919 issue have not 
been corrected in the 1923 book. 


The reversal of Prof. Guitteau’s attitude can only be appreciated through 
comparison of the two prefaces: 

The 1919 Preface \ The 1923 Preface 


“The momentous events of the 
last five years have demonstrated 
conclusively that our history text¬ 
books must be written from a new 
viewpoint. The history of our na¬ 
tional life should not be told as a 
narrative separate and distinct from 
that of the rest of the world. The 
American Revolution, for example, 
is no longer to be studied as an 
isolated event, resulting from British 
injustice. On the contrary, it should 
be placed in its true light as one 
phase of a larger revolution against 
kingly usurpation. In this revolt, 
Englishmen living in the New 
World played a leading part, en¬ 
couraged and sustained by the 
knowledge that their action was ap¬ 
proved by many of the foremost 
British statesmen of the day. So 
with the War of 1812, which takes 
on a new aspect when viewed as an 
incident in the Napoleonic wars, 
rather than a British-American con¬ 
test. Throughout this book, there¬ 
fore, special emphasis has been 
placed upon the relations of the 
United States to other countries, in 
order that the young citizens who 
study it may realize more fully the 
importance of our world relations 
and our world responsibilities.* * *” 


“Recent events have demonstrat¬ 
ed that our teaching of history 
should emphasize more than ever 
before the peculiar and characteris¬ 
tic genius of American institutions, 
and the permanent and outstanding 
assets of American democracy. In 
this text-book the author has kept 
in view the purpose in present-day 
teaching of history and government; 
that is, the preparation of pupils 
for intelligent, helpful citizenship, 
through the study of our country’s 
history, its ideals and institutions. 
History teaching worthy of the name 
no longer tolerates the mere recital 
of facts, dates and names, or the 
answering of stereotyped questions 
at the end of the chapter. Rather, 
our teachers of history will draw 
from the events of the past their 
underlying significance; and they 
will relate the past to the present 
in such a way as to create in the 
minds of the pupils high ideals of 
American citizenship and political 
conduct, and to foster loyalty to the 
best American traditions. * * *” 


The promptness with which “modern historical scholarship” may shift itself 
to any attitude required is truly amazing. 

In his 1919 edition Prof. Guitteau had made no mention of the martyr 
patriot, Nathan Hale, whose last words on the British scaffold were, “I only 
regret that I have but one life to give to my country”; but of Major Andre he 
did say, on page 196: 

“The unfortunate young officer was promptly hanged as a spy.” 


% 


45 


In his new 1923 edition Nathan Hale is reinstated and accorded three-quar¬ 
ters of a page in a picture and appreciative account; while the comment on 
Major Andre is changed to read: 

“He was condemned to death as a spy because of his disguise and the 
concealed papers.” 

The fact is also brought out that Nathan Hale was “promptly hanged, with¬ 
out trial, while Major Andre was given a fair trial.” 

On page 188 of his 1919 text this author was teaching: 

“It is estimated that at least one-third of the colonists remained faith¬ 
ful to the king.” 

In the new book this is changed to read: 

“It is estimated that at least one-third of the colonists remained faith¬ 
ful to the king or at least failed to support the Revolution.” 

Again, on page 273, of his 1919 History, in connection with the war of 1812, 
Prof. Guitteau wrote: 

“Apparently our War Hawks forgot that Upper Canada was settled 
largely by loyalist refugees from the United States. These loyalists and 
their children had not forgotten their treatment by the American patriots 
during the Revolution. They were not likely to ally themselves with the 
people who had driven them from their homes and confiscated their 
property.” 

This remains unchanged in the new book. The New York School Com¬ 
mittee condemns this statement in its report, as follows: 

“The statement that ‘our War Hawks’ had apparently forgotten that 
the loyalist refugees had settled upper Canada and that they and their 
children had not forgotten their mistreatment by the American patriots, 
and were not likely to ally themselves with those who had driven them 
from their homes and confiscated their property, is partisan and uncalled 
for.” 

Elsewhere in its report, the School Committee says of other statements still 
remaining uncorrected: 

“Guitteau’s account of the treatment of the loyalists is prejudiced.” 

For the burning of Washington, Prof. Guitteau advances the same justifica¬ 
tion for the British that is urged in their behalf by the other historians who 
wrote the American history “in the light of recent events,” and that is that: 

“The British claimed that their action was justified on account of the 
burning of York (now Toronto) by the Americans.”—Page 280. 

This, too, remains unchanged in the 1923 book. 




46 


Another stock slander of the “new atmosphere” history writers with “newer 
tendencies,” which Prof. Guitteau had repeated on page 242 of his 1919 text, was: 

“Hamilton distrusted the masses, and once exclaimed at a public dim 
ner, ‘Your people, sir, is a great beast!’ ” 

Whether or not Hamilton made use of that expression, it is of no educational 
value, and its repetition can have only one purpose. While it is conceded that 
Hamilton lacked confidence in the masses, it is unfair to single out this weakest 
point in an eminent character and stress it in a history which fails to give him 
adequate credit for his invaluable services to our country. 

Prof. Guitteau must have recognized the justness of the complaint, be¬ 
cause in his 1923 text he omits the offensive passage and refers to Alexander 
Hamilton as having been: 

“Brilliant in intellect and a genius in finance.” 

Of Benedict Arnold, Prof. Guitteau, in his 1919 history, said, on page 195: 

“Unfortunately, Congress was slow to recognize his services, while 
promoting other officers far less deserving.” 

“However, Congress failed to give him the promotion to which he 
believed himself entitled, and this injured his pride.” 

I am sure that no one will for one moment urge that either version was an 
excuse for treason. 

Of President Jackson, Prof. Guitteau, on page 327 of his 1919 text, and 
left in his 1923 book, said: 

“He could not spell correctly or write good English.” 

A letter concerning the dangerous power of the Bank of the United States, 
written in President Jackson’s own hand, has recently been discovered and is 
now in the Library of Congress. This letter reads in part: 

“A corporation of individuals deriving its powers from Congress, 
pervading every section of the Union, will in the general, by controlling 
the currency and leading men of the country, be more powerful than the 
Government, and may seriously thwart its views and embarrass its opera¬ 
tion. This is one of the dangers of the present bank. But any substitute 
which should concentrate the same or a like power, and be put entirely 
under control of the general Government, might by the union of the 
political and money power give the administration of the Government 
more influence and the Government itself more strength than is compatible 
with the safety of the States, the liberties of the people and the purity of 
our republican institutions.” 

Here is spelling correct enough and English good enough for any language 
purist, clearly expressing political sentiment good enough for any American 
patriot of any period. 

Of Washington, too, some revisionists teach that he could not spell. How¬ 
ever, he, too, managed to express himself, and wrote “Liberty” and “Democracy” 


47 


correctly and plainly enough to be read into the language of every civilized people 
of the world. 

A description of Lincoln which Prof. Guitteau still presents to school chil¬ 
dren in his latest edition, is as follows: 

“Tall, gaunt and awkward, wearing ill-fitting clothes, his voice high 
and shrill, his dark, wrinkled face clouded by a look of habitual melan¬ 
choly, Lincoln suffered in comparison with his brilliant adversary.”—Page 
393. 

Prof. Guitteau in his latest text devotes pages 618 and 620 to argument in 
favor of the League of Nations. This, I am told, is a distinct violation of one 
of the first principles of ethics of the teaching profession. The League of Na¬ 
tions is still a subject of political partisan contention and will be an issue in 
some form or other in the coming presidential campaign. I am of the opinion 
that no unsettled political question should be taught in the public schools from a 
partisan viewpoint. If any controversial matter is to be treated, it should be by 
a presentation of the facts on both sides, impartially. 


48 


BURKE’S SPEECH ON CONCILIATION 

1919 

Edited by 
O. H. WARD 

Taft School, Watertown, Conn. 

This text is proclaimed to be in its Preface and Introduction a new portrayal 
of the forces for freedom in the period of the American Revolution. 

The author of this work announces that: 

“Never did a school classic carry such a present-day message or 
furnish so definite an answer to a national demand.” 

This must be taken in reference not to Burke’s part of the book, for that 
has been a fixed classic for nearly 150 years, but to Prof. Ward’s portion, which 
he says has been written directly in view of “the common peril of 1914.” 

In the preface of this text-book the author proceeds to speak of himself 
as follows: 

“I feel touched and grieved because editors have never given so 
much as an inkling of the vital fact. * * * It needed only the com¬ 

mon peril of 1914 to show both countries how deep was our mutual desire 
for English freedom.” 

and refers to our “emotions of new-found gratitude to England.” 

Apparently the worthy professor’s emotions of his boyhood have under¬ 
gone a change, and he set out to rewrite the American history to conform to his 
new emotion, that is, to revamp old facts to fit new ideas. 

As forces for freedom, innumerable theories of liberty and rights appli¬ 
cable to America, as discussed by Englishmen, are given in this book, but not a 
word is said of the great American patriotic speeches, the Colonial Declarations 
of Rights, or even the Declaration of Independence. 

Indeed, Prof. Ward frankly declares it as his opinion that: 

“An understanding can be gained only by reading what typical English¬ 
men said while the American Revolution was being fomented.” 

Among the advocates of American freedom more than a score of English¬ 
men are copiously quoted, but the names of Jefferson, Hancock, Adams, Otis and 
Paine are omitted. Among the forces for liberty repeatedly mentioned are 
Henry III and Henry VIII, but never Patrick Henry. 

From a study of Prof. Ward’s part of this book it would never be suspected 
that the American Revolution marked an epoch in the advance of liberty. 
According to this author, the main current of democracy was steadily flowing 
in the channel of the British constitution, and is flowing there still. 


49 


Prof. Ward says further in his preface: 

“As long as there lurks in the back of the American consciousness a 
suspicion of English tyranny in 1775, so long will misunderstanding 
prevent the English-speaking nations from working in accord to develop 
Anglo-Saxon freedom.” 

Of the American objection to “taxation without representation,” which the 
colonists resisted with arms, the Professor teaches that England: 

“was in financial straits and needed revenue. A very natural way of 
adding to her income was to tax the colonies. 

“This purpose was quite honest.” 

That the Stamp Act “measures were normal methods of finance and were 
passed with few dissenting votes. Few people in England suspected that there 
was anything momentous about the Stamp Act.” 

Of the tax on tea, Prof. Ward says: 

“The one duty retained was so slight that tea could be bought cheaper 
in America than in England.” 

He omits, however, to state that this small tax involved a great principle. 

Rare ingenuity is shown by Prof. Ward in stating historical facts to fit his 
purpose. After establishing to his satisfaction that England was blessed with a 
high degree of freedom, which the colonists gladly shared; that there was no 
oppression in the Stamp Act, or in the tax on tea, and that there was no tyranny 
at all, nor even any just “suspicion of tyranny,” the Professor says: 

“What has brought about this disastrous change? The German king 
of England, George III. 

“The American Revolution was not an attempt of England to 
tyrannize over her colonies, but was a quarrel fomented by a Hanoverian 
king as part of his programme of despotic ambition.”—Page 3. 

Prof. Ward in seeking to excuse the English for the uprising of the Colonies, 
endeavors to transform the English king into a German. 

Macaulay, the great English historian, in writing of George III, said: 

“The young king was a born Englishman. All his tastes and habits, 
good and bad, were English.” 

George III, in his first speech in Parliament, said of himself: 

“Born and educated in this country (England), I glory in the name 
of Briton.” 

Prof. Ward blunderingly mentions the English historian Lecky as his 
authority on George III. He must have meant Trevelyan, revised, 1917. What 
Lecky said of George III, on his accession to the throne, is this: 

“The new sovereign came to the throne amid an enthusiasm such 
as England had hardly seen since Charles II restored the monarchy. By 
the common consent of all parties the dynastic contest was regarded as 
closed, and after two generations of foreign and unsympathetic rulers, 


so 


the nation, which has always been peculiarly intolerant of strangers, 
accepted with delight an English king.” 

Prof. Ward concedes that George III was not the first “German king of 
England,”, but neglects to remark that neither was he the last. As a matter of 
fact, George III was no more a “German” king of England than is the present 
King George V. George III was no more German than the former Kaiser 
Wilhelm is English. 

However, having settled to his own satisfaction that King George was a 
German, author Ward sums up the subject as follows: 

“So the American Revolution was a contest between German tyranny 
and English freedom, although neither party in the struggle knew that 
this was the issue. After war has been declared people cannot examine 
causes; they have to fight.”—Pages 36-7. 

What the lineage of the king may have had to do with it all, is perhaps 
not a matter properly to be imposed upon the minds of school children whom 
he endeavors to impress with the idea that the fathers of our country did not 
know what they were fighting about; that they were not oppressed; that their 
protests and declarations were tissues of falsehood; that our Nation was founded 
in blunder and is perpetuated in error; and that we have groped in darkness 
and ignorance for a century and a half, until given the great light through 
Prof. Ward’s “emotions of new-found gratitude to England.” 

As a matter of fact, what difference did it make, so far as American 
history is concerned, whether George III was a German or an Englishman? 
All the laws of oppression which the colonists complained of and finally rebelled 
against were enacted by the English Parliament in London, and no one will 
dispute that the members of Parliament were all Englishmen and represented 
English thought, English sentiment and the desires of the English people. 

The following passage, in the first page of the preface of Ward’s book, 
sounds distinctively like war-time British propaganda: 

“Not until the younger generation has learned to distinguish between 
the English freedom of 1775 and the slavery that they may have from 
Prussia, will America return to that unsuspecting confidence in the mother 
country which is vital to the future progress of democracy throughout 
the world.” 

I am told that it has been charged, and not denied, that the Preface and 
Introduction to this Ward’s history were not written in 1919, the year of its 
publication, but during the feverous British war propaganda period of two or 
more years before, and that the manuscript was actually prepared in a propaganda 
factory of England; and it may well be argued that in writing of General George 
Washington in his 1919 edition: 

“If you had called him an ‘American’ he would have thought you 
were using a kind of nick-name. He and his fellow colonists were proud 


51 


that they were Englishmen; they gladly and loyally served an English 
king because he represented the freedom without which they thought 
life not worth living.”—Pages 9-10. 

Prof. Ward, if not intentionally, as a matter of fact did aid pro-English 
propaganda in America. 

For “some of the best descriptions of the nature of the American Revolution” 
Prof. Ward does not refer the student to Bancroft, Plildreth, Lossing, or any 
other standard American authorities, but only to the English historians, Trevelyan, 
Green and Lecky, and to the British Dictionary of National Biography, the 
Encyclopedia Britannica and the Parliamentary History—all British. 




52 


SHORT AMERICAN HISTORY BY GRADES 

(PARTS I AND II) 

Revised, 1920—Re-revised, 1922 

AMERICAN HISTORY FOR GRAMMAR GRADES 

Revised, 1920—Re-revised, 1923 

By 

- EVERETT BARNES, A. M. 

Since the complaints against the Everett Barnes texts were filed with me 
at the first Hearing each of these texts has been re-revised by its author, and he 
seems to have shifted from the “Modern historical scholarship” point of view 
to its direct opposite. 

Both these texts have been so completely re-written that in this “Re-revised 
Edition” most of the passages which were complained against are corrected or 
eliminated. 

The additions which were severely criticized dealt with affairs as late as the 
Presidential election of 1920. The new edition of “Short American History,” 
though bearing later copyright date, stops at the same period. The only apparent 
purpose of the new edition, therefore, was to correct certain passages which 
had been complained of as anti-American and pro-British. 

In the main the complaints against these texts were much the same as 
those against the other histories, and it must be pleasing to every American that 
this author and his publishers have confessed their guilt of having offended 
against America and everything American. 

In his later texts it is no longer stated that “In all the unfairness that had 
been shown it was not England that oppressed the colonies”; that “the disputes 
were not between the colonists and the English at home, but between the Tories 
and the Whigs on both sides of the sea, neighbor against neighbor”; and that 
“had there been no war this great country would probably still be a great branch 
of the British Empire”; but in the place of all that, patriotic recital of real facts 
( are substituted. 

A 

In these re-revisions John Hancock is no longer “a smuggler,” but once more 
a “sterling patriot.” 

The portrait of Lord Cornwallis has given way to a full-page portrait of 
Nathan Hale and an appreciative account of his martyrdom. 

Of Lexington, Prof. Barnes no longer teaches that: 

“It was a fight of Briton against Briton; on one side Britons fighting 
for liberty; on the other Britons fighting because ordered to by their King.” 

He now teaches in the same line, on the same page: 

“Poorly armed, untrained American farmers could make the veteran 
British regulars run.” 


53 


That “the worst traitor of the war was Charles Lee” is recanted in the re¬ 
revised book. This rank is now bestowed upon Benedict Arnold and he is no 
longer the injured hero, “whom the Congress also had not treated fairly.” 

Faneuil Hall, “the cradle of liberty,” which in the revised history had been 
consigned to oblivion, is now in the re-revised edition, restored with a picture 
and an account of great Revolutionary meetings there. 

A year ago, Prof. Barnes, following “the newer tendencies in historical 
writing,” announced by the revisionists, was teaching: 

“What folly it was for the three-fourths of England in the British 
Isles to make war on the one-fourth of England in America.” 

He has changed this to: 

“What folly it was for the people in the British Isles to make war 
on the colonists in America.” 

Phrases such as “English liberty,” “Englishmen in America,” and “Britons 
fighting for liberty,” ceaselessly reiterated throughout the Anglicized volumes, 
have disappeared, and instead are phrases such as “new ideals of freedom,” 
“the American colonists” and “patriots of the Revolution.” 

Prof. Barnes’ characterization of the Continental Congress in his 1920 edi¬ 
tion has given way in the 1922 edition to an account quite different, as does 
appear from the following: 


From the Revised History of 1920 

“It was hard for the colonists to 
learn that in union there is strength. 
From its beginning in doubt and 
fear, to its ending in victory, all 
through the six years of its course, 
the Congress was a scene of petty 
bickerings and schemings, through 
which single colonies sought to make 
gains for themselves. The little 
colonies wanted to have as much 
power as the big ones, and the big 
ones wanted to control the little 
ones. There was a scramble for 
honors and offices. In that Congress 
were selfish, unworthy, short¬ 
sighted, narrow-minded, office-seek¬ 
ing and office-trading plotters, just 
as there have been in every Con¬ 
gress ever since. 

“So many petty wranglings stood 
in the way of wise measures to help 
the Army, that it suffered much and 


From the Re-revised History of 

1922 

“The colonists had now learned 
that in union there is strength. The 
Congress met soon after the com¬ 
mencement of the war, and for six 
years, until its close, the conduct of 
the war was guided by its action, 
under the leadership of such sterl¬ 
ing patriots as John Hancock, 
Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, 
John Adams and others. It was an 
advisory body, working without the 
aid of any written constitution. 

“It was, however, the best means 
the colonists had, at the time, of 
bringing about co-operation. It 
afforded the opportunity for all the 
colonies, instead of any single 
colony, to be represented in its 
counsels. It for the colonists was a 

time of common danger from with¬ 
out, and this together with a com- 


54 


the cause was set back for years. 
Such union as there was among the 
colonies, during the war, came from 
the outside pressure of a great com¬ 
mon danger, more than from a 
brotherly spirit within. Thy were 
united because they dared not be 
otherwise. For a time it was left for 
each colony to do what it pleased in 
fighting the king; but at length, 
Congress acted as though there were 
a union, and voted to raise an army 
of 20,000 men,” etc. 


mon interest and patriotic zeal to 
carry to a successful issue the great 
cause, which the battles of Lexing¬ 
ton and Concord stood for, united 
the colonists for the struggle upon 
which they were entering. 

“While the Congress may not al¬ 
ways have done those things which 
at times appeared to be advisable, 
yet the colonists never lost confi¬ 
dence in the wisdom, patriotism and 
patience of its great leaders. This 
Congress voted to raise an army of 
twenty thousand men,” etc. 


Since these events are nearly a hundred and fifty years in the past, and 
there are no new facts available concerning them, it is manifest that this altera¬ 
tion of version by Mr. Barnes in his 1920 text was due, apparently, solely to 
his change of viewpoint. He has learned that his viewpoint was wrong 
and unfair to America, and like a man has acknowledged his error. 

Many heroic characters and events, unmentioned in the 1920 text, now crowd 
into the made over pages of Barnes’ 1922 history. He has learned, evidently, 
that in the writing of American school history for American children there 
can properly be none but the American attitude. 

Leading merchants of the colonies are no longer declared criminal smug¬ 
glers, but, instead, he asserts that this “smuggling” was open and patriotic defiance 
of tyrannous English laws which forbade the colonists to trade with the world, 
or even with one another, except in English ships. 

James Otis is presented as a patriot instead of loyalist. 

The battle of Stony Point reappears as an important event. 

Anthony Wayne is resurrected. 

John Stark comes in for credit. 

Commodore John Barry is justly cited. 

Francis Scott Key is referred to as the author of the Star Spangled Banner. 

The courage “shown on both sides” at Bunker Hill, but which Prof. Barnes 
in his revised history had stressed entirely on the side of the British, is now 
properly stressed on the side of the thousand undrilled patriots who so gloriously 
resisted three times their number of the best trained British regulars. 

Here are the old and new accounts: 


1920 

“The courage shown on both sides 
was wonderful. To march, as those 
British soldiers did up to the works, 
so near that each one felt that the 


1922 

“The courage shown on both sides 
was wonderful. ‘Don’t fire until you 
see the whites of their eyes,’ said 
the American commander, who knew 


55 


man who was aiming at him could 
not miss, required a nerve as steady 
as was ever shown on battlefield 
since men began to kill each other.” 


that their supply of ammunition was 
small, and that his men did not have 
enough bayonets to be used suc¬ 
cessfully in meeting the charge of 
the British.” 


The typical British assertion that during the Revolution England was fight¬ 
ing single-handed against three nations has been removed. 

The sympathetic account of the Tories and their Indian allies, whom the 
patriots “raided” and drove off to Canada, dwelt upon in the 1920 text, is not 
mentioned in the re-revised books. 

Prof. Barnes has also materially altered his account of John Paul Jones’ 
glorious capture of the British ship Serapis. 


In his 1920 edition he said: 

“The ‘Serapis’ had the better of 
the fight and would have won, had 
not a sailor of ‘The Richard’ hap¬ 
pened to throw a hand grenade 
down a hatchway of the ‘Serapis,’ 
where in exploding it fired a large 
lot of powder which blew up the 
ship and killed many of her men.” 


In his 1922 edition he says: 

“The ‘Serapis’ had the better of 
the fight, until a sailor of ‘The 
Richard’ fearlessly lashed in the 
rigging, far out over the deck, threw 
firebrands into the magazine hatch¬ 
way of the ‘Serapis’ and finally 
ignited the powder which blew up 
the ship and killed many of her 
men.” 


The one account is, substantially, the one given by the British captain after 
Jones chivalrously had landed him in England; the other is the version given 
by John Paul Jones and his men. Jones’ account has, however, always been 
the accepted American version, although for his valorous story-telling the 
British captain was knighted and his version became emblazoned in British 
history. 

In his 1920 text Historian Barnes was impugning the motives of France 
in aiding the colonists to secure independence, as follows: 

“France had fought England, not so much from a generous wish to 
help the colonies, as from hatred of England, and at the end, France wanted 
her share of the spoils.” 

In his 1922 text he has amended this to read: 

“France had given generous help to the colonies.” 

Prof. Barnes’ distortion of the causes of the War of 1812 had been severely 
condemned, and, heeding the voice of the American people, he has re-written that, 
as will be seen from the following: 


In his 1920 text he wrote: 

“It was a mistake. It was a case 
in which righteous anger overcame 
judgment. Some hot-blooded young 


In his 1922 text he writes: 

“The impressment of our seamen 
by England interfered with our 
trade, as ships were searched upon 


56 


statesmen from the Southern States, 
among whom were Henry Clay, of 
Kentucky, and John C. Calhoun, of 
South Carolina, urged that war be 
declared, and they had their way. 
Much against his wish, Madison 
yielded, and the War of 1812 against 
England began. Had there been 
less haste it would have been better, 
for, no doubt, a peaceful settlement 
could have been made. Older men 
with cooler heads, though angry 
with England, felt that it would 
be wiser to wait, and were much in 
doubt as to the outcome.” 


the high seas, and Henry Clay, a 
statesman from Kentucky, who 
afterward went to the Netherlands 
to help make the treaty of peace, 
insisted that war must be declared 
to protect American commerce. He 
was supported by John C. Calhoun 
and statesmen from other sections of 
the country. It was also generally 
believed that the English in Canada 
were arming the Indians of the 
Northwest and encouraging, if not 
actually directing, the raids of 
Tecumseh and other Indian chief¬ 
tains.” 


The 1920 account reads like British propaganda; the 1922 statement is 
American history. 

The justification for the British in burning Washingon, offered by Prof. 
Barnes, in his 1920 books, was practically the same as given by several other 
pro-British American history revisers. The account of the destruction of public 
buildings and records has also been partially corrected in the re-revised history. 


1920 

“Then they burned the Presi¬ 
dent’s house, the Treasury Build¬ 
ing, and other government build¬ 
ings. They said that they destroyed 
these government buildings to pun¬ 
ish the Americans, who had, early in 
the war, burned some public build¬ 
ings in Canada.” 


1922 

“Then they burned the Presi¬ 
dent’s house, the Treasury Building, 
and other government buildings. 
This was one of the great mis¬ 
fortunes of the whole war, since 
many records and collections of art 
were destroyed which could not be 
replaced.” 


Undoubtedly, due to strong complaint directed against Prof. Barnes’ 1920 
version of the Battle of New Orleans, he has wholly re-written that story, as 
shown in the two accounts: 


1920 

“The war, as it went on, became 
more and more burdensome. The 
cost of carrying it on was very great. 
Many of the American people be¬ 
lieved it to be a needless war, into 
which the country had been drawn 
by those who had not had the fore¬ 
sight to count the cost or judge of 


1922 

“The war as it went on became 
more burdensome. The cost of 
carrying it on was great and both 
sides became anxious for peace.** 
Andrew Jackson, a young lawyer, 
had settled at Nashville, Tennessee, 
and was soon made a judge. He 
made himself famous by enforcing 


57 


the outcome. Many who had been 
keen for a fight at first, had now 
tired of the strife, and there was a 
general desire for peace.** 

“Very bad management, as a rule 
had been shown by the leaders of 
the American armies. Badly com¬ 
manded, as they were, the American 
soldiers had been unable to hold 
their own against the troops of the 
enemy. In but one instance did the 
Americans win a glorious vctory, 
and that was so late in the war that 
peace had been concluded before the 
battle was fought. It was the battle 
of New Orleans.** 

“All that it was necessary for the 
Americans to do to win a victory, 
was to hold their ground.** 

“The invaders came on like Brit¬ 
ish soldiers, and like British soldiers 
they came, again and again, those 
that were not dead. For three hours 
they endured that deadly fire, and 
offered up their lives for their king. 
Then they gave up the hopeless task, 
for they saw that to perform it was 
beyond the power of man. The 
British lost twenty-five hundred 
men and many officers, among whom 
was the gallant General Pakenham, 
their commander. The American 
loss was very small. 

“It was a wasted battle; it was a 
needless victory; it counted for 
nothing for the war was over.’’ 


law and order in the wilderness 
country. 

“The Creek Indians under the 
leadership of Tecumseh had cap¬ 
tured Fort Mimms, about fifty miles 
from Mobile, and massacred about 
five hundred men, women and child¬ 
ren. An army was raised with 
Jackson in command and marched 
against the Indians. A battle was 
fought at Horseshoe Bend in which 
the Indians were completely de¬ 
feated. The British, not knowing 
of this battle, came on to New 
Orleans, and Jackson was there to 
meet them.** 

“The invaders came on again and 
again, the front ranks carrying short 
ladders with which to scale the 
earthworks. These were the best 
trained soldiers in the world but 
Jackson’s Kentucky and Tennessee 
riflemen were the best marksmen in 
the world and in the three hour 
battle twenty-five hundred men and 
officers, including the British com¬ 
mander, General Pakenham, were 
killed. The American loss was very 
small. Although at the time this 
battle was fought the treaty of peace 
had already been signed at Ghent, 
it was of utmost importance as it 
had a marked effect in creating in 
Europe a great respect for the valor 
of the American army.” 


The mobility of Prof. Barnes’ judgment is remarkable. Just so long as it 
appeared to his advantage to write in harmony with the “newer tendencies in 
historical writing,” with “the methods of modern historical scholarship” and 
the “other influences from overseas,” this author was apparently not adverse 
to misrepresenting and minimizing American characters and their achieve¬ 
ments; but now that he has heard the rumblings of the storm of American 
patriotic protest, he reverses his attitude and turns his facts round-about. 


58 


An elemental complaint against these revisionists is that they are not faith¬ 
ful to the facts as facts, but have adjusted their attitude in submission to influence 
brought to bear upon them. Here is one of them who surely presents striking 
illustration of the justice of this complaint. 

Prof. Barnes by restoring American teachings into his “Short American 
History by Grades,” issued in two volumnes, and re-revising in 1923 his “Ameri¬ 
can History for Grammar Grades,” issued in one volume, practically a replica 
of his “Short American History by Grades,” admits that he must have been 
led astray by some one. Barnes, however, is only a Brooklyn school principal 
and is not considered in scholastic circles of colleges and historical associations, 
like some of the other complained-of historians, who have been seduced into a 
sycophantic acceptance of English authority on all things American. 

It is remarked, however, that although the Barnes’ “History for Grammar 
Grades” had not been re-revised when the Authorized 1923 list of Text-books 
Used in the New York City Schools came out, it was nevertheless on the Author¬ 
ized List. 


4 


59 


BRITISH PROPAGANDA AGENCIES ARE ACTIVE IN 

AMERICA 

There is striking significance in the uniformity with which these revisionists 
proclaim their purpose to rewrite American school history from a new view¬ 
point. A comparison of their statements in their prefaces reveals that they all 
seem to be subject to the same influences. 

It is well known that children are highly sensitive to the spirit of an 
author. This is why in the writing of school history the prime essential is a 
true and virile patriotic spirit in the author. If this be wanting, his history, 
however precise it may be as to specific facts, is only a bulb without a current. 

Charles Grant Miller, in the course of his testimony at one of the hearings, 
said: 

“The history that truthfully presents our nation’s annals in such 
sympathetic, virile, patriotic spirit as to inculcate in our children pride in 
the birth and development of our republic, honor to its heroes, devotion 
to its principles and progress, and zest in its ideals and purposes—this is 
a true history. But the history that creeps along the verge of falsehood, 
alien in spirit, snarling in self-defense that it is 'not actually untrue,’ 
and inoculating the children with suspicion of the nation’s founders, doubt 
as to its cardinal principles, and indifference to its democratic ideals—that 
history is false.” 

And I agree with him. 

It may all be accidental, nevertheless no one can fail to note the complete 
accord in which all these school history revisionists have shifted their stand¬ 
point, and the striking similarity of their statements proclaiming their new atti¬ 
tude. 

Col. Alvin M. Owsley, National Commander of The American Legion, in 
his statement at a hearing in my office, said: 

“We must keep on the alert and not let this protest that has been 
so well started dwindle away into nothing, for want of the real facts about 
the hostile forces at work. Let us find out just who or what influence 
it is that has undertaken to rewrite our history, to underestimate the value 
of our national characters and to undermine the fixed principles upon 
which our nation was built.” 

There are certain recognized influences which have been working long and 
powerfully to this end. 

There never has been any secret about the underlying purpose in the Cecil 
Rhodes Scholarships. Cecil Rhodes was no idle dreamer and his far-seeing 
genius and practical methods added vast domains to the British Empire. Few of 
his plans failed. 


60 


As already stated in this report, one of the objects of Rhodes was “the 
ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the 
British Empire. ,, 

Cecil Rhodes laid his ambitious plans to that end, and by heavily endowing 
with British gold, and backed by the British government, created agencies for 
their working out. Under the ingenious Rhodes Scholarship scheme the best 
of our American young men, selected from the colleges of all our States, espe¬ 
cially for their required “qualities of leadership,” are taken to England and 
placed in Oxford University for three years, with an allowance of 300 pounds 
English money a year, and are then returned to us perfect English gentlemen, 
advocating British-American union. 

These former American young men have formed a Rhodes Scholars’ Alumni 
Association of America. This association has been openly active in defense of 
the Anglicized school histories. 

When Cecil Rhodes dreamed his dream of “the extension of British rule 
throughout the world” and “the ultimate recovery of the United States of 
America as an integral part of the British Empire,” he was obsessed of ambition 
less for political than for financial and commercial dominance. Since then the 
money power has shifted its seat, but the dream of world dominance remains, 
and the British government is still its most effective instrument. 

The money super-power is now on this side of the Atlantic, and according 
to the English historian, John Richard Green, “the main current of the history 
of the English-speaking peoples must run along the channel not of the Thames, 
or the Mersey, but of the Hudson and the Mississippi.” But in all the intriguing 
pleas for an “English-speaking union” those active in the movement do not seek 
an extension of the area of freedom under the American Constitution, but always 
an extension of British trade and power. 

So it is easy to see why our fundamental principles are being discredited, 
our history rewritten and our ideals destroyed at behest of a super-power which 
is neither British nor American, knows no patriotism and recognizes no country 
except as subject for exploitation. 

This international money power is constantly seeking to persuade the Amer¬ 
ican people to surrender their inherited sources of inspiration, strength and 
guidance, and does now, largely, control the governmental policies of the United 
States as well as of England and other foreign countries. 

America is safe only if her people will see to it that the historic truths, 
principles, ideals and purposes, that have served them unfailingly through a cen¬ 
tury and a half of unprecedented progress and to unparalleled prestige, be pre¬ 
served unsullied in our own generation and transmitted unimpaired to our chil¬ 
dren. The antidote to the propaganda poison lies in patriotic teaching in the 
public schools. 

Educational foundations, which have come to exercise immeasurable in¬ 
fluences upon the scholastic and public school systems of the United States, are 
offsprings of the international banking power, as a glance at their interlocking 


61 


directorates and a sane thought as to the habitual practices and intuitive pur¬ 
poses of their founders clearly reveal. 

Elihu Root, Chairman of the Carnegie council, illustrates at once this direct¬ 
ness of connection, and the completeness of design of the super-power. 

Andrew Carnegie was another, Britisher through and through, who could 
dream grandly and had power to make his dreams come true. He endowed the 
multiform Carnegie institutions from motives which he never sought to con¬ 
ceal. His fondest dream was to bring about a “reunited state, the British-Amer- 
ican Union. ,, 

The spirit of this finds expression and fruition through the Carnegie Libra¬ 
ries, Foundation for Advancement of Teaching, Division of Intercourse and Edu¬ 
cation, Aid for Vocational Education, Association for International Conciliation 
and, by no means least seductive, the Carnegie Pension Fund for American 
professors and even American judges. 

Direct and vital effects of these organized influences for Briticization of our 
scholastic and public school systems are readily detected and clearly identified 
in utterances of innumerable Teachers’ Associations in the last few years. 
These are fairly typified and summarized in the following excerpt from the report 
of the American History Teachers’ Association, submitted to the United States 
Congress, October 22, 1918: 

“Attention is directed to the old charge that the study of the Amer¬ 
ican Revolution in our schools tends to promote an anti-British state of 
mind. It is a natural reaction to demand revision of our text-books with 
a view to the cultivation of a pro-British state of mind; and that reaction 
is now actually in evidence.” 

Other influences that have been directly at work to bring about the emascu¬ 
lation of American history and the destruction of our national spirit and morale 
are not only recognizable but confessed and in some cases even boasted. 

Sir Gilbert Parker, professional British propagandist, in an article in Har¬ 
per’s Magazine, March, 1918, outlined some of his methods of “putting it over” 
on the American people, as follows: 

“Practically since the day war broke out between England and the 
Central Powers I became responsible for American publicity,” Parker 
wrote. “I need hardly say that the scope of my department was very ex¬ 
tensive and its activities widely ranged. 

“Among the activities was a weekly report to the British Cabinet 
upon the state of American opinion, and constant touch with the permanent 
correspondents of American newspapers in England. * * * Among 

other things, we supplied 360 newspapers in the smaller cities of the United 
States with an English newspaper. 

“We advised and stimulated many people to write articles; we utilized 
the friendly services and assistance of confidential friends; we had reports 
from important Americans constantly, and established association by per¬ 
sonal correspondence with influential and eminent people of every profes- 


62 


sion in the United States, beginning with university and college presi¬ 
dents, professors and scientific men, and running through all the ranges of 
the population. * * * 

“It is hardly necessary to say that the work was one of extreme dif¬ 
ficulty and delicacy.” 

The propaganda that Parker boasts he was putting over was six-fold: 

That the Revolution was a contest between the German George III 
on one side and the English people and American colonists on the other. 

That “many Americans regret the War of 1912 as most Britishers 
regret the acts of George III.” 

That “the greatest enemy of American development was Napoleon,” 
but Great Britain saved us from conquest by him. 

That it was the British Foreign Minister Canning who gave us the 
Monroe Doctrine and made it an accepted fact. 

That “the British navy and behind it the British Government has 
been the best friend that the United States ever had in its history.” 

And that “Next to Great Britain, the best friend the United States 
has today is Japan.” 

Ten of our school historians promptly began repeating to American school 
children these new theories which Sir Gilbert has frankly boasted as his official 
British propaganda. 

When Lord Northcliffe had completed his propaganda organization in this 
country during the recent World War, and was returning home, it was an¬ 
nounced that he was leaving behind him $150,000,000 (our own money, of 
course) and 10,000 trained agents to carry on the work. His London Times 
in the issue of July 4, 1919, rendered account of the “efficient propaganda” 
which he had inaugurated here and was being “carried out by those trained in 
the arts of creating public good will and of swaying public opinion toward a 
definite purpose.” 

Among the methods, stated by the London Times, to be then in operation 
or in prospect in this country were: 

“Efficiently organized propaganda to mobilize the press, the church, 
the stage and the cinema; to press into active service the whole educational 
system, the universities, public and high schools and primary schools; to 
provide for subsidizing the best men to write books and articles. * * * . 
Histories and text-books upon literature should be revised. New books 
should be added, particularly in the primary schools. Hundreds of ex¬ 
change university scholarships should be provided. Local societies should 
be formed in every centre to foster British-American good-will, in close 
co-operation with an administrative committee.” 

This same Fourth of July issue of the London Times contained a signed 
article by Owen Wister, American-born, in which he said: 

“A movement to correct the school books of the United States has 
been started, and it will go on.” 


63 


George Haven Putnam, a prominent New York book publisher, bom in 
England, and high official in the English-speaking Union, made a Fourth of 
July address in London in 1918 before the Anglo-Saxon Fellowship. In the 
course of his address Mr. Putnam gave his English confreres this assurance: 

“I want to see not a Declaration of Independence, but a Declaration 
of Interdependence—an acknowledgement that the two peoples belong 
together.” 

He also told his audience on that occasion that: 

“Text-books are now being prepared which will present a juster 
account (in the United States) of the events of 1775-1783, 1812-1815 
and 1861-1865.” 

All this might mean much, or nothing, according to the results. The fact 
is that we now find a half-score altered text-books in our schools, in which 
American history is grossly distorted and de-Americanized, in the interest of 
British-American union. 

In addition to the elaborate and admittedly well-oiled British propaganda 
machine, established in our country by Sir Gilbert Parker and the late Lord 
Northcliffe, the output of which still flows steadily through newspaper syndicates, 
magazines and motion pictures, there are at least a full dozen of strong propa¬ 
ganda organizations, all British or pro-British, busily at work Briticizing 
American public opinion. 

The stated purposes of these propaganda organizations range all the way 
from specious cultivation of “more friendly relations between Great Britain and 
the United States” to fulfillment of the Carnegie prophecy of “the reunited 
state, the British-American Union” and the Cecil Rhodes design of “the recovery 
of the United States as an integral part of the British Empire.” 

The Sons of St. George, an old organization of British-born residents of 
this country, was Tory during the Revolution and is Tory still. Within the 
last few years it has emerged from obscurity through a nation-wide hard drive 
for increased membership and vigorous assertion of British spirit. 

The English-Speaking Union is made up of British and pro-British advo¬ 
cates of what its name indicates—Anglo-American union. It is an international 
association of British and pro-British enthusiasts, the object of which is to 
foster pro-British sentiment throughout the United States by influencing states¬ 
men, authors, lecturers, preachers, editors of magazines, newspapers and syndi¬ 
cates and school historians to disparage American annals, ideals, traditions, 
policies, achievements and institutions and exalt those of Great Britain. 

This organization is amply financed from sympathetic sources, and for the 
last three years has been conducting, regardless of expenses, a tremendous drive 
for membership. Branches have been established in New York, Boston, Phila¬ 
delphia, Washington, Baltimore, Richmond, Buffalo, Cleveland, Chicago, St. 
Louis, Lincoln, Neb., and San Francisco. 


64 


The English-Speaking Union issues to its members a magazine, “The Land¬ 
mark,” which has bitterly attacked as “demagogic” and “narrow-minded” the 
popular patriotic protest against Anglicized history text-books in our public 
schools. 

The American President of the English-Speaking Union is John W. Davis, 
a lawyer for J. P. Morgan and the international banking interests. 

George W. Wickersham, another Morgan lawyer, is Chairman of the 
American board of directors. 

George Haven Putnam, New York publisher, who in 1918 boasted in London 
that American school histories were being rewritten, is its chief promoter. 

Prof, Matthew Page Andrews of Baltimore, Md., is a director. Prof. 
Andrews is the author of “American History and Government,” in which he 
teaches that our Civil War was caused by perfidy and broken promises on the 
part of President Lincoln. 

This hostile theory, as well as the argument, and to a large degree the 
exact words, appear to have been lifted bodily out of Greg’s British “History 
of the United States,” which is so bitterly anti-American throughout that it 
never has been offered for sale in the North. 

In his school history, Prof. Matthew Page Andrews teaches: 

That Lincoln was called the “Slave Hound of Illinois”; 

That not slavery but the tariff divided the North and South; 

That secession was a Northern principle; 

That slavery was discontinued in the North only for economic reasons; 

That most Southerners desired and many tried to free their slaves, 
but Northerners would not permit them to do so; 

That the condition of the slaves of the South was far better than that 
of factory workers of the North; 

And that, finally, the Emancipation Proclamation was a mere political 
play and moral pretense, as it could have no possible application except 
to slaves over which President Lincoln had no jurisdiction. 

The English Speaking Union, of which this Anglicized historian is a Director, 
and the Morgan lawyers, Davis and Wickersham, are the highest American 
officials, arranges for special social attentions in England and for the granting 
of degrees by English universities to American collegiates and historians. 

With respect to this phase of English propaganda, Charles Edward Russell, 
distinguished American diplomat and author, in a statement made at one of 
my hearings, gave some first-hand information concerning it. Mr. Russell said, 
in part: 

“About ten years ago I happened to pick up one of these school 
histories, written by two of the greatest revisionists; and reading it care¬ 
fully I was astonished to see what changes had been made in the story of 
the Revolution—how the Revolution was belittled, and also how the 
history of the War of 1812 had been turned around. It just said that the 






65 


War of 1812 was a foolish, unnecessary and insignificant war and the 
United States regretted having taken part in it! 

“In 1918 I was Commissioner for the United States Committee on 
Public Information to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 
I was there five months in that capacity, in their offices in London. My 
operations in that position brought me in close connection with the interests 
of the British government, and I observed many astounding things. 

“While I was there in that capacity there came to London one of 
the authors of this very history that I had read some years ago with so 
much astonishment. He was a gentleman that in our own country had 
gotten very little attention. I was surprised to see, the moment he landed, 
evidently by some preconcerted plan, he was taken possession of. He 
was interviewed at great length in all the newspapers. He was invited 
daily to luncheons and dinners. He was lionized socially, and he was taken 
to Oxford and endowed with the greatest honors that Oxford could pay 
to anybody, and he was made a figure of very great importance, all based 
upon the fact that he was a friend of Great Britain. This was his reward 
apparently for writing such a history. 

“Those of us who know the social forms in Great Britain know 
quite well the very delightful generosity and hospitality of the English 
homes, and the wise manner in which the English make use of their social 
advantages. It is only a very natural thing that the author in this country 
who thinks he has never secured the recognition he deserves at home, 
goes abroad, and he is immediately swept off his feet.” 

I asked Mr. Russell whether in order to get that recognition on the other 
side it was necessary for such author to have first served England in America 
and he answered that it was, “except in a case where a man may be useful in 
future services of this kind.” 

The present reception to President Butler of Columbia University throughout 
England, where he is being feasted, toasted and exalted for his pro-British 
propaganda is a striking confirmation of Mr. Russell’s statement. 

The S’ulgrave Institute is another “hands-across-the-sea” organization com¬ 
posed of British and pro-British. The Sulgrave big idea is founded upon the 
realization that George Washington has loomed large throughout the world, 
and so must be claimed as an Englishman, who established in this western world 
English freedom. Like designs are working regarding Lincoln, for whom there 
is now being provided an English lineage and an English ancestral home, as 
another shrine where expatriate Americans may bend the sycophantic knee in 
foolish worship of supposed English influences that are said to have freed our 
slaves and saved our Union. 

The Pilgrim Society, in connection with its manifold other activities, is 
busily disseminating the doctrine that all American institutions that are good came 
over in the Mayflower, and that the time is near at hand for the Mayflower to 
re-embark its cargo of a mighty nation and return it to the “mother country.” 





66 


The Church Peace Union has a $2,000,000 Carnegie fund, “to pay the ex¬ 
penses of English and American ministers of note to cross and recross the 
Atlantic, to occupy famous pulpits, to speak before ministers’ meetings and to 
receive honorary literary degrees at universities.” The idea is thus to utilize 
preachers and pulpits to develop “the international mind.” 

The World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship Through the 
Churches has as its stated purpose, “To organize the religious forces of the world 
so that the weight of all churches and Christians can be brought to bear upon the 
relations of governments and peoples.” The Most Reverend the Lord Arch¬ 
bishop of Canterbury is president, and the Right Honorable Sir William H. 
Dickinson, K. B. E., London, is the first secretary. This Alliance has established 
local committees in 500 American communities, and it works in close cooperation 
with the Church Peace Union and its $2,000,000 Carnegie fund. 

George W. Wickersham, American chairman of the English-Speaking Union, 
is also a high official in the World Alliance. A score of eminent American 
clergymen, always conspicuously demanding American policies in the interest 
of Great Britain, are directors. Among these are Bishop James Cannon, Dr. 
James L. Barton, Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin, Dr. Charles E. Jefferson, Dr. Harry 
Emerson Fosdick, Dr. Charles S. McFarland, Dr. Frederick Lynch, Dr. Sidney 
L. Gulick and Dr. Hamilton Holt. Every one of these in their preachings and 
in their zealous pleas to President Harding and Secretary Hughes recently 
demanded that the American Army and Navy be rushed to the aid of Great 
Britain at the Dardanelles. 

“Peace Union” and “International Friendship,” as interpreted by these pro¬ 
paganda organizations, financed with Carnegie funds, have but one purpose, and 
that is “a re-united state, the British-American Union.” 

The American Association for International Cooperation has recently 
started a circularizing campaign to build up an influential membership. Its 
character, connections, purpose and financial backing may be surmised from the 
fact that its chairman, George W. Wickersham, is also chairman of the English- 
Speaking Union and a high official of the World Alliance. 

The Magna Charta Day Association advocates our national observance of 
June 15, as the natal day of free government, instead of, or at least in eclipse 
of, the Fourth of July. 

The official pronouncement of this association declares: 

“Magna Charta is the great outstanding event in the history of World 
Liberty. 

“The Magna Charta Day Association seeks to develop a greater 
sense of unity of thought and purpose of the SEVEN NATIONS. 

“It is important to have in mind THE ESSENTIAL AND ACTUAL 
SOLIDARITY OF THE SEVEN NATIONS—the United States and 
the six nations of the British Union—Great Britain and Ireland, New¬ 
foundland, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.” 

As outlined, the purpose of this association is “by means of Magna Charta 
Study Clubs to encourage the widespread study of the origin and development 


c 

c 


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c 


( 


67 


of our liberties,” and “to promote an annual day of commemoration by the Seven 
Nations.” 

If all this means anything at all, it means British-American union. 

The British Committee at the head of this association consists of Lady 
Astor, a former American, the Rt. Rev. J. E. C. Weldon and the Rt. Hon. Sir 
Gilbert Parker, Bart. 

Th-e executive secretary and treasurer of the American branch of this Magna 
Charta Society is J. W. Hamilton, who is a member of the editorial staff of The 
English-Speaking World, published monthly in New York as the organ of a 
dozen British propaganda agencies. 

Among the American Committeemen of the Magna Charta Day Association 
are more than a score of college presidents, professors, other educators and 
preachers, who readily are traced into other British propaganda organizations 
and as being officially identified with various British services in this country. 
The name of Prof. Matthew Page Andrews, traducer of Lincoln, stands at the 
head of the list of American Committeemen of this association, and results of 
the activities and influences of these propaganda organizations may be traced 
in the Anglicized school histories. 

For instance, in the McLaughlin and Van Tyne school history, in 1911, 
there was no mention whatever of Magna Charta. In their revised edition of 
1919, however, a full new chapter of fifteen pages is devoted to the “Magna 
Charta” and very little space is given to the Declaration of Independence. 

George E. Roberts, another American Committeeman of this society, is 
vice-president and publicity manager of the National City Bank, New York, a 
director and the propaganda expert of the International Banking Corporation 
and also, in association with Henry S. Pritchett, President of the $200,000,000 
Carnegie Foundation, conducts a correspondence school in “Economics for 
Executives.” This shows the International Bankers, the foundations and the 
pro-English propagandists pretty closely together, in fact too closely for the 
comfort of security of America and the good, plain, honest American. 

The British propagandists, besides being supplied with money, may also be 
supplied with certified associates out of a long list of American college presidents 
and professors, teachers, preachers, lawyers and judges, endowed or expecting 
to be subsidized into sympathy with the Carnegie design of “the reunited state, 
the British-American union.” 

The National Security League is now sending letters into the Wall Street 
section, asking for a fund of $25,000 a year, “for the special training of school 
teachers to interpret the United States Constitution in the public schools,” and to 
secure legislation in the various states which will make this teaching compulsory 
throughout the country. 

I do not think that it will be hard for anyone to guess the character of the 
special training for interpretation of the Constitution, to be provided for with 
funds from Wall Street. The three eminent attorneys for Wall Street interests 
whose signatures appear on the letters of appeal for funds decline to disclose 
this phase. 


68 


A hundred and fifty American educators are listed as favorable to this 
special interpretation movement. More than half of them are found to be mem¬ 
bers of one or another or several of the British propaganda organizations. 

When investigated by a Committee of Congress, during the war, the National 
Security League was found to have $50,000 of Carnegie money. With its funds 
sufficiently augmented from Wall Street and its large force of British propaganda 
operatives organized in our colleges and schools, this organization may soon be 
expected to make the same stealthy assault upon the American Constitution as 
already has been made upon American school history. 

I believe that it is now clearly apparent that the concerted revisions of the 
ten offending American school histories did not come by chance coincidence, 
but as the result of thoroughly organized and heavily financed activities. Also, 
that “the international mind,” sought to be established through these influences, 
is always the British mind. 

For any further evidence of the determined purpose to disregard the Declara¬ 
tion of Independence, breed disrespect for the Constitution of the United States 
and American institutions and belittle the great men and women responsible for 
the establishing of the United States of America, one only has to read the address 
made by Dr. William Allen Nielson, President of Smith College, before the 
English-Speaking Union, at a dinner at the Hotel Astor, New York City, a few 
days ago, at which dinner former Ambassador John W. Davis presided and Sir 
Percy Fitzpatrick and Sir Eustace Finness, Bart., spoke. 

After asserting that the world had “gone to pieces, like a broken bowl,” 
and that the English-speaking peoples were the great pieces that remain unbroken, 
Dr. Nielson said that the difficulties involving the English-speaking peoples were 
due chiefly to “miseducation.” “The histories studied in this country have been 
getting better and better. * * *” 

“ But the fact must be faced that within the last few years this progress 
has been checked. There has set in a wave of reaction, and in almost every 
State of the Union there is going on an agitation for the reintroduction of 
parochial patriotism into the histories and colleges. 

“The scholars of this country, then, ask no support in the pushing of par¬ 
ticular views. They ask and all they need is to be let alone, and our watchword 
in this part of our activity is to leave the writing and the teaching of history 
to the scholars and demand that the politicians keep their hands off.” 

The good President of Smith College deplores the fact that there still are 
men and women in America whose patriotism cannot be purchased with British 
gold and who insist upon preserving America for those who love and admire 
America and cherish her traditions and institutions. 

To my mind the gravest menace to the friendship between America and 
Great Britain lies in the pernicious and persistent British propaganda maintained 
in the United States, through which not only our history, but our financial, indus¬ 
trial, governmental and political institutions are misrepresented to our people. 


69 


That this is not without recognition even in England the following editorial 
utterance of the New Statesman of London shows: 

“Many American people who, from the beginning, have been ardent 
supporters of the Allies’ cause are concerned, not with the eagerness, but 
with the lavish unintelligence of the publicity methods we have adopted. 
They doubt the wisdom of our elaborate pretense of doing nothing offi¬ 
cially, when evidences of an extensive activity are everywhere apparent. 

“They suspect the existence of British control of certain American 
newspapers. They criticize a certain kind of English speaker and jour¬ 
nalist. Much of the writing and speaking in behalf of England has been 
of a kind which would be condemned by anyone possessing a fair knowl¬ 
edge of the American mind and temperament.” 

The methods thus criticized in England are increasingly put into force 
throughout America. A vast amount of this propaganda, steadily flowing through 
our newspapers, magazines, movies, books, lecture platforms and pulpits, bank 
and commercial circulars and countless other channels, is unsuspected and fully 
effective. There can be no doubt in any sane and fair-thinking mind that this 
propaganda is responsible for the stealthy but concentrated movement to alter 
and denature American history texts used in our public schools, and thus poison 
the source of our national pride, inspiration and morale. 

But that is not all. A bold attempt is being made in the light of day to tie 
up for good the United States with England. 

The international bankers having apparently succeeded in gaining control 
of certain American Ambassadors, United States senators, congressmen, gov¬ 
ernors, legislators, judges, political leaders in both major parties, and others high 
in councils of the nation, no longer attempt to hide their true purpose of bringing 
about a British-American union to be controlled by England. Their advocacy of 
the League of Nations, of the Four-Power Treaty and now of the World Court 
has, in my opinion, no other meaning than their willingness to subordinate Amer¬ 
ican interests to those of England. 

Lord Robert Cecil’s recent presence in this country, to spread English 
propaganda in America in behalf of the League of Nations, although the people 
in the last Presidential election in no uncertain terms declared themselves against 
entangling alliances with England or any other foreign country, was the boldest 
act of a foreigner imaginable. 

But what are we to expect of a British subject propagandist, when an Amer¬ 
ican citizen, former President Frank A. Vanderlip of the National City Bank 
of New York, after a visit with the English bankers abroad, is proposing that 
instead of the duly elected President and his Cabinet, a Council of Foreign Rela¬ 
tions, composed of twenty-five members elected for a long term of years, and 
at least 30 per cent, of them always abroad, should pilot the destinies of this 
country in relation with foreign governments. 

In conclusion, I wish to recall the wise advice of George Washington, the 
Father of our country, to the American people, wherein he adjured them to 


70 


observe good faith and justice toward all nations and cultivate peace and 
harmony with all, but neither seek nor grant exclusive favors nor preferences 
to any one; to constantly keep in view that it is folly for one nation to look 
for disinterested favors from another, because it must pay with a portion of 
its independence for whatever it may accept under that character. 

It is my firm conviction that General Washington must have been 
inspired when in 1796 he warned the American people that it was easy to 
foresee “that from different causes and from different quarters, much pain 
will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in their minds the con¬ 
viction of the truth.” 

This prophecy has come to be too true; and only a reawakening of the 
love for America, her institutions, her ideals and traditions in the breasts 
of her citizens, by birth and choice, will save our country from paying with 
a portion of her independence for the follies and, in many instances, wilful 
un-American acts of some of her high officials and of those who bow to 
god Mammon, or succumb to foreign flattery. 

During the hearings before me and since then a number of patriotic socie¬ 
ties have adopted resolutions demanding that the use of the hereinbefore-referred- 
to history text-books be discontinued. Copies of these resolutions, filed with 
me, are hereto attached. 

Respectfully submitted, 

DAVID HIRSHFIELD, 

Commissioner of Accounts. 


/ 


71 


RESOLUTIONS OF PATRIOTIC ORGANIZATIONS 

Resolutions adopted unanimously by the NATIONAL CONGRESS OF 
THE SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, May 15, 1922: 

“THE SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION in national 
congress assembled express their deep interest in the subject of text-books 
on American history in use in our public schools. We protest against 
the use of any text-book which lauds the Tories and censures the Patriots, 
which maligns the memory of any of the great men of the Revolutionary 
period or undervalues the services and sacrifices by which our national 
independence was won. 

“Text-books on American history should be written only by those 
who are in sympathy with the principles for which our forefathers fought. 
Every such history should adequately stress the story of the American 
Revolution, portray in colorful outline the heroic incidents of the struggle 
and teach the priceless value of the institutions which we inherit from our 
forefathers. 

“We protest against any text-books which teach socialism, bolshevism, 
or class hatred. THE COMMITTEE ON PATRIOTIC EDUCATION 
is instructed to carry out this resolution and is authorized to take all need¬ 
ful measures to eliminate from our schools all text-books objectionable 
on the above grounds.” 

By the VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES 
the following resolution was unanimously adopted in the National Encampment, 
August 24, 1922: 

“THE VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS, in National Encamp¬ 
ment assembled, recognize that grave charges have been made, and proven 
to be true, that American history text-books in use in public schools have 
lately been revised in un-American spirit. 

“We indignantly protest against the use in schools of those histories 
which defame or ignore our Nation’s founders, falsify the causes of the 
Revolution and the War of 1812, discredit the statement of grievances 
made in the Declaration of Independence, belittle the heroism, sacrifice, 
and idealism of our forefathers, and misinterpret the principles and pur¬ 
poses upon which our Republic was founded and for which it has stood. 

“We declare that the whole noble history of the founding and vindica¬ 
tion of free government on this continent has a fixed, distinctive and 
exalted meaning, not only for Americans, but for all mankind; that the 
precepts and traditions descending to us from that heroic period are a 
precious heritage which we generously have shared with the whole human 
race, and which heritage must not now be denied to our children. 

“We demand that the treason texts be thrown out of the public 


72 


schools of every State, and that truthful histories be substituted instead, 
and we pledge our unflagging efforts to that end. 

“We feel that to Charles Grant Miller, through whose patriotic ser¬ 
vice a sinister attempt to degrade our country’s history has been exposed 
and checked, is due the gratitude not only of the members of this organiza¬ 
tion, but of all Americans of the present and future. 

“In this connection your committee recommends that the national 
patriotic instructor, the department patriotic instructors, and post patri¬ 
otic instructors be instructed to investigate the report to the chairman of 
the Americanization committee upon the histories now in use in the schools 
of the several States, and that in all States where histories are in use 
which do not conform to the true ideals of Americanization, the matter 
be taken up by the Americanization committee with the superintendent 
of public instruction in the several States with the view of having ap¬ 
proved editions of American histories adopted for use in such schools.” 

Resolution unanimously adopted by NEW YORK STATE DEPART¬ 
MENT, GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC, in annual encampment, June 
7, 1922: 

“Whereas, The sympathetic teaching of true American history in the 
educational institutions of our country is essential to the retention and 
strengthening of our patriotic spirit and ideals; and 

“Our nation’s true annals have been unfailing sources of pride and 
inspiration which have prompted us as a people to staunch character, 
unparalleled achievement and unprecedented prestige among the powers 
and to world-wide influence in liberation and elevation of 1 mankind; 

“Resolved, That we condemn as unfit for school use or teaching any 
history text-books or other books, plans, pictures or persons which de¬ 
fame our nation’s founders and defenders, misrepresent the ideals and 
causes for which they struggled and sacrificed, or misinterpret the prin¬ 
ciples and purposes upon which our Republic was established and for 
which it has stood. 

“We demand that our annals be preserved unimpaired as the right¬ 
ful heritage of posterity, and as guarantee that the future of our Nation 
shall be as glorious as its past. 

“We demand that our Nation’s true history be presented to rising 
generations with a view to wholesome cultivation of patriotic spirit, 
solidarity and morale, based upon right conceptions of the doctrines and 
traditions of American democracy. 

“We protest against any school or other teachings which advance 
class interest, create class distinction or inculcate class hatred.” 

Resolution adopted by SEATTLE CHAPTER, SONS OF THE AMERI¬ 
CAN REVOLUTION, January 27, 1922: 

“Whereas, The free public school, originating and developing in 
America, giving American youth the education and training so necessary 


73 


to a life of usefulness and good citizenship, is one of the most valuable 
of all American institutions and one of the principal bulwarks of liberty 
and independence, and 

“Whereas, National safety and national unity demand the mainte¬ 
nance of our public school system free from the influences, whether 
foreign or domestic, which tend to degrade American ideals and to cor¬ 
rupt our national traditions, and 

“Whereas, Among America’s richest treasures are its Revolutionary 
history—the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere’s Ride, Putnam leaving his 
plow in the field, Lexington, Bunker Hill, Patrick Henry’s speech, Valley 
Forge, Saratoga, Yorktown—great landmarks of a heroic race, as daring 
in conception, as thrilling in execution, as momentous in results as any¬ 
thing in ancient romance, the divine birthright of every American child, 
in which he absorbs and lives and breathes the very spirit that made 
these United States, and 

“Whereas, Indisputable evidence proves an insidious and treacherous 
propaganda in operation to place in our public schools American history 
text-books designed, to destroy faith in the forefathers and repect for 
American history and institutions; 

“Now, Therefore, Be It Resolved, That Seattle Chapter, Sons of 
the American Revolution, realizing that eternal vigilance is the price 
of peace, freedom and security, regards with grave concern this condi¬ 
tion in our schools, and urges upon our educational authorities (school 
boards, superintendents, supervisors, principals and teachers) the vital 
need of a careful review of American history text-books, that steps 
may be taken to bar obnoxious books from our schools, and that only 
such text-books be permitted therein as teach the simple heroic truth of 
American history, and written not by aliens, but by American historians.” 

The DESCENDANTS OF THE SIGNERS OF THE DECLARATION 
OF INDEPENDENCE, in their National Congress, in Independence Hall, 
July 4, 1922, unanimously adopted this resolution: 

“It is resolved as the sense of this meeting of the descendants of 
the signers of the Declaration of Independence that, while the members 
would view with apprehension any tampering with the histories of the 
United States used in the public schools, in the interest of any country, 
people, races or policies, at the same time they cannot believe that what is 
falsely called a 'truthful presentation of the other side of the case’ de¬ 
mands that the histories put in the hands of American children should 
boldly misrepresent the men and measures, manners and methods and the 
great events of the Revolution and the subsequent periods leading up to 
the Constitution of 1787; 

“This misrepresentation and misinterpretation being accomplished 
(1) by the belittling of the significance of the Declaration of Independence 
itself; (2) by disparaging and ridiculing signers of the Declaration and 


74 


leaders in the Revolution, impugning their motives, holding them up to 
contempt of the youth of to-day as patriots and statesmen; and (3) by 
ignoring some of the most celebrated of our Revolutionary heroes who 
gave all, even life itself, for the country’s great cause.” 

The NEW JERSEY STATE COUNCIL OF THE JUNIOR ORDER 
UNITED AMERICAN MECHANICS, representing 80,000 members, in its 
1922 convention, unanimously adopted this resolution: 

“It is by the light of true American annals, ideals, principles, policies 
and purposes that liberty-seeking people of all climes, all races, all religions, 
all colors and all classes have in our country united together in solidarity, 
singleness of aspiration and splendid morale as a nation. 

“We demand that our nation’s true history be taught to rising gen¬ 
erations in the public schools, with a view to wholesome cultivation of 
virile patriotism. 

“We demand that American history be preserved unimpaired, as the 
rightful heritage of our children and as guarantee that the future of our 
nation shall be as secure and glorious as is its past. 

“We pledge our hearty co-operation with THE PATRIOT LEAGUE 
FOR THE PRESERVATION OF AMERICAN HISTORY in the co¬ 
ordination of plans and activities of all patriotic organizations in driving 
all treason texts out of the schools of our country.” 

The STATE COUNCIL OF PENNSYLVANIA, ORDER OF INDE¬ 
PENDENT AMERICANS, in convention September, 1922, unanimously adopted 
this resolution: 

“Resolved, That the text-books in the public schools which teach sec¬ 
tarian and Anglo-Saxon propaganda must be removed therefrom.” 

Resolution unanimously adopted by THE NATIONAL SOCIETY, 
DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, in their Annual Con¬ 
gress held April 9, 1923: 

“The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, in 
National Congress, recognize that the true history of the birth of our 
Republic, handed down through successive generations upon the sacred 
word of honor of our fathers, has been unfailing source of the splendid 
patriotism, solidarity, morale and peace spirit of the American people. 

“This heroic story has been the strongest inspiration throughout our 
past, as it is at present, to ‘cherish, maintain and extend the institutions 
of American freedom, to foster true patriotism and love of country, and 
to aid in securing for mankind all the blessings of liberty.’ 

“We demand that our country’s true annals, ideals and 1 principles be 
preserved unsullied and transmitted unimpaired to our children in the 
public schools, as their rightful heritage, and for the perpetuation of 
wholesome national spirit based upon right conceptions of the vital doc¬ 
trines and traditions of American democracy. 





75 

“We condemn as unfit for school use those history texts which de¬ 
fame or ignore our heroic forefathers, misrepresent the consecrated causes 
for which they struggled and sacrificed, and misinterpret the fundamental 
principles upon which they established our liberties and our Nation. 

“We declare that the teaching of true American history in the public 
schools of our country is vitally essential to the inculcation of our dis¬ 
tinctive national spirit and ideals in our future citizenry. 

“We pledge our ready co-operation with other patriotic bodies in prac¬ 
tical measures for cleansing the public schools of false and unpatriotic 
teachings.” 



M. B. Brown Printing & Binding Co., 
37-41 Chambers Street, N. Y. 









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